The Home and foreign review

[No. 8.
THE

HOME AND FOREIGN

REVIEW.

SEU VETUS EST VERUM DILIGO 81VE NOVUM.

APRIL 1864.

WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,

J4 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON,
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Price Six Shillings.

THE

HOME AND FOEEIGN EEVIEW.

APRIL 1864.

THE IRISH EXODUS AND TENANT RIGHT.

After nearly ten years of comparative quiet and prosperitj^,
Ireland has once more obtained an unfortunate prominence,
and has received of late almost as much attention, and quite as
much and as varied advice, as in the days of Catholic Emanci-
pation or of the potato blight. The whole press of this country
has been occupied with her affairs. The statistical reports bear-
ing on her agriculture and mineral wealth, her manufactures,
her trade, her poor-law system, her bank deposits, her emigra-
tion returns, her railway investments, her general taxation,
actual and comparative, — all have been sifted and analysed by
lectui-ers and pamphleteers, to support pet theories or serve
the purposes of party. From Arthur Young and Wakefield
down to Perraud and Lasteyrie, the writers, both French and
English, who have treated of Ireland have been studied with
almost unexampled attention. Men the most dissimilar — Mr.
Maguire and Mr. Whiteside — have in two successive years
pressed the subject of her distress and decline on the considera-
tion of Parliament at the very beginning of the session. Whilst
her tried and trusted friends have proclaimed her sufferings,
those who represent the hereditary foes of her Catholic people
now profess to deplore the tide that carries, them from her
shores. The fact of her recent retrogression is so universally
admitted that even the hopeful Chief Secretary has ceased to
ignore or deny it.

The present social condition of Ireland is indeed one that
furnishes food for very serious and very painful reflection. The
distress which existed in many parts of the south and west dur-

voL. IV. a a

340 The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right,

ing the winter of 1861-62 has been aggravated by a third defi-
cient harvest, and has extended to parts of the country hitherto
comparative^ prosperous. Along with the recurrence of ex-
treme destitution, there have been many instances of agrarian
outrage, often attended with circumstances of more than usual
atrocity. The diminution, too, of the agricultural wealth of the
country — which, whatever efforts may have been made to conceal
or explain it, is an ascertained fact — is a sjonptom of decay that
has aroused the fears of the timid, and called forth forebodings
of ruin, natural perhaps, but needlessly gloomy. Finally, the
alarming impetus given by an aggregation of social causes to
the movement now so generally known as the Irish Exodus, has
not only excited the feelings of the "friends of the people,'' but
absolutely frightened some of the very exterminators of 1848
into expressions of alarm lest the land should become a waste
from want of hands to till it. Not the least remarkable part of
this change of tone is to be noticed in the way in which the
most anti- Irish portion of the English press has lately learned to
treat the subject. Those who once thought it an excellent thing
that the Celts were gone — gone with a vengeance ! — now tell
us that their departure must, on all principles of social and
political philosophy, be considered a misfortune. The Solicitor-
General for Ireland indeed, in an able speech lately delivered
in Dublin, declared his belief that the stream of emigration
must continue to flow for years yet to come ; and Professor
Ingram, whose late address to the Statistical Society of Ireland
has been frequently quoted, neither rejoices nor grieves at it, but
rests satisfied with endeavouring to account for the exodus on
strictly economic principles. Among the national and Catholic
party in Ireland, the continuous emigration is looked on as an
unmitigated evil. The Bishops in their addresses to their clergy,
the clergy in their discourses to the people, all agree in this. The
Attorney-Greneral for Ireland lately declared in the House of
Commons that " he stood appalled before the gigantic emigra-
tion in progress from her shores." There is, moreover, a con-
siderable party in Ireland, adequately represented in the press,
which, for the last three years, has been at issue with those
who direct Irish affairs about the reality of the asserted dimi-
nution of Irish prosperity. Though sincerely grieved at the
manifest retrogression, it nevertheless sees in that circumstance
80 tempting a weapon to turn against the " prosperity-mongers"
that it cannot resist making the most of it. Every additional
cipher in the decrease column of Sir William Donelly's Statis-
tical Reports is a fresh damper for viceregal congratulations.
Every emigrant who sails from the port of Galway is another
living argument against Saxon misrule. This pai*ty deplores in

The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right, 341

all sincerity the decay of the national wealth. It grieves for
the departure of the bone and sinew from the land ; but in the
press or on the platform these things furnish telling points
against the powers that be. Highly-seasoned language, written
or spoken, is acceptable to the majority of Irishmen. Applause
is more certainly awarded to vigour than to accuracy ; and the
result is that important facts are occasionally distorted, and that
not unfrequently the changes are rung on desolation, oppres-
sion, and ruin, in a tone that sounds positively exultant. It was
a favourite expression of O'Connell's, that England's weak-
ness is Ireland's opportunity. The dictum, however, seems
to have been changed of late ; and it is Ireland's weakness that
is now supposed to be Ireland's opportunity. Now in this, as
in most cases where strong party feelings and prejudices are
aroused, the truth will be found about half-way between the
statements of the opposing parties. The late Dr. Whately ad-
vised a newly-arrived English official never to sit on either
the right side or the left of an Irish car, but to place himself
in the driver's seat, and so see both sides.

The question of emigration has become so mixed up with the
kindred one concerning small farms, and their consolidation into
larger ones, that it is difficult to treat the two apart. While, on
the one hand, the population in Ireland has been steadily dimi-
nishing, on the other, the average size of the farms has been as
steadily on the increase. It is not to be wondered at that the
one fact should have been represented as the consequence of the
other ; such doubtless has been partially the case, but not to the
extent that some persons have supposed. Eviction being the
chief means by which the size of farms has been increased, there
should, if the emigration were to be accounted for by the consoli-
dation of farms, be some approximation towards a correspond-
ence between the statistical returns of eviction and of emigration.
But if we compare the return of evictions for the ten years end-
ing with 1862 with the number of persons permanently leaving
Ireland during the same period, we find of the former 12,351
cases, numbering 59,187 persons, while the total number of
those emigrating during the same period was 963,167, or about
16 emigrants for every person evicted. Again, the same returns
show^ a proportionate disparity between the diminution in the
number of farms (whether caused by eviction or otherwise) and
the diminution in the general population of the country. In
the twenty years ending with 1862, the period during which
the consolidation of farms was most rapid, the number of hold-
ings in Ireland diminished by about 120,000. Now, if we allow
an average of 4| persons to each holder's family, we shall have but
540,000 persons dependent on those evicted from or giving up

342 The Irish Exodus and Tenant liiyht.

land during a period in whicli the population of Ireland dimi-
nished by nearly 2,400,000. These figures seem to prove very
clearly that the largest proportion of those whose emigration
can be even indirectly traced to their having, either voluntarily
or under compulsion, given up their land in Ireland is, roughly
speaking, as one to four. But if we leave statistics aside for the
moment, and found our observations on the personal experience
of those well acquainted with the emigration movement, we shall
find that the great majority of emigrants who leave Ireland for
America, or for the manufacturing districts of England or Scot-
land, consists of unmarried men and women — the junior mem-
bers of small farmers' and cottiers' families, who are unable to
find remunerative employment at home, and set out to seek it
in other countries.

Before the potato failure, almost every farmer holding from
ten to thirty acres of land sought to make provision for his sons
by a partition of his farm. When the eldest son married, he
was settled on a corner of the father's farm, a house with a shed
or pigsty attached being built for the reception of his bride ;
and when the second and third son married, each got a similar
slice. This destructive practice was too frequently permitted
by the landlords ; sometimes from avarice, sometimes to increase
political influence, sometimes from a mistaken goodnature, but
most frequently from simple carelessness in the management of
their estates. Those were the days when "the Irish peasant
spent half his time in hiding potatoes, and the other half in find-
ing them." Often paying an exorbitant rent for the doubtful
privilege of being allowed to settle on the subdivision of an
already small holding, and living habitually in a very miserable
manner, yet, as long as the potato flourished, this class of people
existed and even multiplied. But when the potato failed they
were left utterly destitute. The fearful ordeal through which
Ireland passed during 1846-48 is known to every Irishman.
One of its results was, that the subdivision of farms was no longer
permitted. The losses sufiered by the owners of densely peopled
estates during • the famine frightened the landlords into the
opposite extreme ; and the system of consolidation became uni-
versal. The process was in too many instances efiected by
barbarous means : in the majority of cases, however, and espe-
cially where it is still continued, it is generally carried out by
the more legitimate course of adding to the adjoining holdings
any small farm that may become vacant. If, in consequence of
nonpayment of rent, a landlord be obliged to take possession of
a five-acre holding, and if he be firmly persuaded that the late
tenant's failure arose from the mere fact that the land he held
was insufficient, in any but the most prosperous seasons, to

The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right, 343

support a family, much, less to produce any rent, it would be
folly to expect, or even to wish, the owner, when once free to
dispose of those five acres, to re-let them as an independent
holding. If he did so, he would directly injure himself without
conferring any real benefit either on the person taking the farm
or on the country at large. But when we reflect that in 1861
there were still in Ireland 125,549 holdings of less than five
acres, and 309,480 of less than fifteen acres, out of a total of
608,564, the continued inclination to consolidate, more especially
when consolidation is generally accompanied by a decrease of
tillage, becomes a matter of very serious moment. Still more
important is it when we find those invested with high authority
perpetually insisting on the peculiar capabilities of Ireland for
the production of beef and mutton, and its unfitness for corn.
Such teachings have been understood by many to mean that
tillage, by whicb the poor man lives, should decrease, and that
grazing should be more generally adopted. We cannot say
whether these phrases were or were not meant to be so construed.
That they were susceptible of an interpretation not necessarily
adverse to tillage, we are well aware ; and if that meaning had
been made more distinctly clear, we conceive that the advice to
depend on producing meat rather than corn would have been
extremely valuable.^ But to declare that the future destiny of
Ireland is to be a prairie almost without inhabitants, but a
fruitful mother of flocks and herds, shows indifierent states-
manship, and a very bad idea of farming. One of the many
facts connected with Irish agricultural statistics, which have been
in some quarters regarded as anomalous, is that, while the area
under grass has increased, the numbers of sheep and cattle in
the country have diminished. There is nothing surprising in
this circumstance. It is now no longer a matter admitting of
dispute, that a larger number of stock can be maintained on a
w^ell-managed farm where a system of mixed husbandry is pur-
sued than on a mere grazing-farm. Not only has this been
over and over again proved in the high-farming districts of
England and Scotland, but the statistical returns of Ireland —
where high farming is certainly not the rule — show us the same
thing. In a very suggestive letter which lately appeared in the
Irish Farmers Gazette,- a comparison is drawn between the

' There is no doubt that the old " potatoes-and-oats," the "bog-mould for
manure and scratching for ploughing," system of farming -will not do for the
future. There is no country in Europe where green crops can be more success-
fully grown, and none where corn is more precarious, than in Ireland ; and any
Irish farmer who will not make up his mind to "walk all his produce to
market" can no longer expect to compete with his British or Continental
brother.

2 Letter from Major O'Reilly, M.!*., to the Irish Farmer's Gazette, Jan. 30.
1861, p. 47.

344 The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right.

amount of stock maintained in a certain number of Irisli counties
where tillage prevails, and in an equal number, including some
of the richest land in Ireland, where there is a preponderance of
grass-land. The result of this comparison clearly shows that those
tillage counties maintain 34 per c'ent more sheep and cattle to each
acre of grass than the grazing counties do. There is, moreover,
a large proportion of the land in Ireland which is naturally
unfitted for permanent pasturage; and, while we are not disposed
to deny that there are thousands of acres in several counties into
which " it would be a sin to put a plough," we are satisfied that
there is a still larger number now in grass, which, judiciously
and generous^ tilled, could be made to fatten ten sheep for
every one that they half-starve at present. The consolidation
of farms, therefore, may be carried a great deal too far ; and
while there is little hope that the mere cottier farmer (when
dependent solely on his few acres for support) will be able to
hold his ground in competition with the accumulating capital,
science, and intelligence year by year applied to modern agricul-
ture, yet we should much regret to see Ireland parcelled out
into farms of 300 and 400 acres, as England generally now is.
Irish farmers holding from twenty to forty acres, and with suf-
ficient skill and capital to make the most of them, have been
able to meet their engagements even during the three very
trying years lately passed. And, as we may reasonably hope
that Ireland will not be visited by any succession of worse or
more trying seasons than these have been, we may also trust
that farmers of that calibre will in the future be able, not merely
to hold their heads above water, but to strike out towards in-
dependent wealth as boldly as they had begun to do during
the five favourable seasons immediately preceding the year
1859.

There is one point in connection with the emigration move-
ment which should be noticed, in order to dispel a very erroneous
impression which the tone of certain journals has done much to
create, viz. that there is a feeling of despair amongst the agri-
cultural class in Ireland, and that the farmers have given up, or
are giving up, their land, to go to America. Speaking from
trustworthy information derived from various parts of Ireland,
we must deny this to be the case ; and we very much doubt if
in the whole of Ireland twenty instances could be found where
the tenant of either a large or a small farm, who has paid his
last half-year's rent and is able to pay the next, has voluntarily
resigned his land in order to emigrate.

Statistics clearly show that, however the number of inhabi-
tants may have diminished in Ireland within the last seven-
teen years, the agricultural population is still much in excess

The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right, 345

of tlie agricultural population of either England or Scotland f
and bearing this in mind, we cannot avoid the painful con-
clusion that, if the people of Ireland be destined to remain as
exclusively as now dependent on the land for their support,
there is no reasonable expectation of any rapid decrease, much
less of a cessation, of the emigration."* Plappily , however, not in
the south alone, but in Leinster and parts of Connaught as well,
the flax movement seems to have taken a decided hold of the
public mind. Strenuous and well-directed efforts are being made
to reestablish the linen manufacture in Ireland ; and if these
prove successful in producing remunerative employment for a
large number of hands, not only in the sowing and saving of
the crop, but also in the various stages of its subsequent manu-
facture, a great step will have been taken towards checking the
present wide-spread desire of the unemployed to emigrate.

The removal of the prohibitory duty on Irish-grown tobacco,
and the consequent encouragement of the cultivation of that
plant, for which the climate of Ireland is said to be peculiarly
suitable, is one of the many schemes proposed by those anxious
to develope the industrial resources of the country. Any thing
which will tend to improve the system of agriculture, or to cre-
ate remunerative occupation for the unemployed in manufactures
or works unconnected with the land, will be a great boon, and
may tend to check the emigration by helping to make Ireland
as good to live in as those countries are to which Irishmen at
present fly from the compulsory idleness, poverty, and discontent
which they see around them at home.

So far we have looked at the present condition of Ireland
merely from a social as distinct from a political point of view.
We shall now advert to some of those questions in which indi-
vidual Irishmen cannot act entirely for themselves, and where
the interference of the legislature may be required. Conflict-
ing as are the theories that have been propounded on the Irish
questions to which we have already referred, still more so are
those put forth in regard to political affairs. All the evils,
however, for which these theories prescribe may be ultimately
traced to one of two sources — social or religious discord. At
the root of the former is the land-question, with its train of
eviction, emigration, agitation, and agrarian outrage. At the
root of the latter is the Established Church of Ireland, an inde-
fensible anomaly, among the evils emanating from which have

•^ Irish Emigration considered. By M. J. Barry, Esq., barrister- at-law. pp.
9-11.

^ The average annual preponderance of births orer deaths in Ireland is about
60,000 ; so that, in the absence of any other disturbing causes, a yearly emigra-
tion to nearly that extent would not have the effect of making the population
less than it now is.

346 The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right.

been murders, jealousies, heartburnings, class animosities, the
setting of the poor against the rich and of the rich against the
poor — that chronic discontent and bitterness of feeling which
make the case of Ireland peculiarly hard to deal with, and
which must ever be the certain sequel of perpetuated injustice.

The Times has told us — and it expresses an opinion held by
many — that the chief bar to the prosperity of Ireland is agrarian
crime. The reasoning by which this conclusion is reached is
simple : Ireland requires capital to develope her resources ;
capitalists will not speculate where life and property are inse-
cure ; in Ireland the needful security does not exist. There is
no doubt that about two years ago the friends of Ireland were
startled from a pleasant dream of hopefulness and security by
an unexpected outburst of agrarian crime. Tipperary, which
in 1861 had seen the novel sight of a maiden assizes, was
visited in 1862 by a special commission. Several murders and
outrages of a more than usually atrocious description were com-
mitted in succession in the south of Ireland ; and in the majority
of instances the guilty escaped. This difficult}^ of bringing crime
home to its perpetrators has ever been, and still is, one of the
most disheartening features of Irish agrarian crime. In very
rare instances can evidence be procured, even where there is,
amongst persons individually unconnected with the outrage,
an undoubted knowledge of its details. By some this is at-
tributed to a sympathy with the criminal, if not to a positive
approval of his crime ; by others it is attributed merely to a
fear of the consequences of denouncing the murderer. Be the
cause what it may, it is a lamentable fact that a murderous out-
rage may be committed on the public road ; that two, three,
perhaps a dozen persons, totally unconnected with either the
assailants or their victim, may witness it ; and yet that from not
one of those persons can a word of evidence be extorted. The
temptation of the large rewards offered by Government even for
private information seems equally powerless with the nobler
motives that would lead most men instinctively to lay hands
upon a murderer. This is a state of things so fraught with evil
to Ireland, that it behoves all those who have her interest and
that of civilisation at heart to look it boldjy in the face.

There can be no doubt that the prime cause of almost all
Irish crime is the land question. Men of all parties admit this
to be the case. The very name by which this species of crime
is usually known denotes the general belief as to its origin.
In the House of Commons, the murders to which we have just
referred were directly attributed to the state of the laws regard-
ing land. Although the taste and feeling of those who ex-
pressed this opinion were animadverted on severely by other

The Irish Exodus and lenant RighU 347

members of the House, no one was bold enougli to deny its
truth. When the Catholic Bishops, in their address to the
people of Ireland, which appeared about the same time, de-
plored and denounced the fearful spread of murder and outrage
in the south, they felt bound simultaneously to declare their
conviction as to the ever-fertile source from which these mur-
ders and outrages proceeded. This declaration of the Catholic
hierarchy, like most other documents of the kind, found many
severe critics in the English and the Irish press. It was pre-
tended that, by bringing forward so prominently the defects
of those laws to which, by their showing, agrarian crime was
directly attributable, the Bishops were practically justifying
the very crimes they professed to denounce. In the severest,
however, of these or similar strictures on the episcopal address,
there was never any attempt made to deny the truth of the
assertion it contained. We may fairlj^, therefore, assume as
granted that the prime cause of Irish agrarian crime is the con-
dition of the laws respecting land. At any rate, we may assume,
without fear of contradiction, that to the unsettled and irritable
state of popular feeling, which, partly with reason, partly with-
out reason, the public discussion with regard to these laws has
created, may be ultimately traced that periodically recurring
series of crimes which is not only a crying disgrace to Ireland,
but among the greatest of her many social misfortunes.

If the root of agrarian crime in Ireland is to be found in
the existing relations between landlord and tenant, a close and
impartial investigation of these relations becomes an indispens-
able step in the direction we have proposed to follow. Here,
indeed, a wide field of enquiry lies open before us ; a field worn
somewhat bare by the feet of many an anxious searcher after
truth — marked also by the footsteps of some less anxious to
find truth than to misrepresent it ; a field, unfortunately, the
chief product of which has hitherto been a fruit resembling
closely in its principal attribute the classical apple of discord.
We shall have to examine again the almost threadbare subject
of tenant right, which has been loudly demanded as a measure
of simple justice, and loudly denounced as a measure of con-
fiscation— the food of one, and the poison of others ; the safe-
guard from revolution, and the victory of communism; the
bugbear of the aristocrat, and the panacea of the demagogue.
No subject of political discussion has been praised and abused
with a greater amount of exaggeration. Whether the fault
be chiefiy on the side of the landlords or on that of the
tenants, it is undoubtedly a fact that the relations existing
between these two classes in Ireland are not such as might
be wished. This antagonism has probably grown out of a

348 Tke Irish Exodus and Tenant Right,

long continuance of favouritism on the part of the ruling
powers towards one class at the expense of the other. While
the land-owners of past generations were permitted, if not en-
couraged, to treat the land-holders with grinding injustice, and
while the peasant felt that from the law of the land as then
administered he had no hope of redress, it was evident that
there would he no limit to the extortions and tyranny of the
one, except such as might be raised by the lawless resistance of
the other. The difference also of religion between the gentry
and the peasantry must not be overlooked as having been a
material agent in creating and fostering the growth of this
social animosity. The laws which favoured the upper at the
expense of the lower orders had been for the most part framed
to uphold Protestantism and to uproot Popery. The very fact
of the upper and the lower orders holding two different reli-
gious beliefs — the one fostered, the other persecuted, by the
Government — was an element of antagonism peculiar to Ire-
land. With exceptions scarcely more numerous than sufficed
to prove the rule, the landlords were, if not sworn Orangemen,
at least strong Protestants — in other words, good haters of
Popery and Papists. The local administration of a one-sided
code of laws was exclusively entrusted to the very party to
promote whose ascendancy these laws had been specially en-
acted. The inevitable consequence was that the peasant, to
whom the law had never been any thing but an instrument
of oppression, to whom the administrators of the law had
been ever unsparing, if sometimes venal, tyrants, grew to look
on the laws themselves, on the rulers who made them, and
on the gentry who put them in force, as being all alike the
undying enemies of his social as well as of his religious
welfare.

The Catholic gentry in Ireland were numerically so insigni-
ficant a body as to be of little account in the social scheme.
Small as were their numbers, their influence in the state was
hardly in proportion even to their numerical strength. Confis-
cation and persecution had not only thinned their ranks, but
had almost entirely broken their spirit. They had for genera-
tions suffered so much for their faith, that to be allowed to
retain that faith in peace, along with the small remnants of
their ancestral estates, was too often the moderate limit of their
ambition. Kneeling before the same altar at which the peo-
ple worshipped, the Poman Catholic gentleman was bound to
his peasant neighbours by the strong link of a common reli-
gious belief. One element, therefore, of the animosity that
existed between the gentry and the people, was absent in the
case of the Catholic squire. But persecution and insecurity

The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right. 349

may have made him needy ; need may have made him exacting.
In the eyes of his half-starving tenantry, he too may have some-
times seemed to be a tyrant. To the evicted peasant it was as
certain destruction to be turned out of his wretched cabin and
to be deprived of his few half-tilled acres by a Catholic landlord,
as though the notice to quit bore the name of the most Papist-
hating -of Orangemen. The popular good- will that the squire
had gained by the fact of his being a Catholic was frequently out-
weighed by that of his being a landlord as well. It was plain,
then, that when the Irish people wanted leaders, they would be
little likely to seek, and less likely to find them amongst the
gentry of their own faith. When, therefore, the time had at
length arrived for the people to make an effort for freedom, to
whom were they to look for the guidance that, in a constitu-
tional struggle like the one in which they were about to engage,
must be sought in a class of men of higher intelligence and
education than their own ? It was evident that in the Catholic
clergy alone the popular movement could find leaders both
willing to accept and competent to fill the position. The con-
nections and sympathies of the Irish priesthood were almost
exclusively with the middle and lower orders. The bad govern-
ment of Ireland, the injustice of the religious distinctions main-
tained in that country, the anti-Popery persecution inflicted for
generations on its inhabitants, had fallen with more severity on
the ministers of the persecuted faith than on any other class.
In the days of the fiercest persecution the priest had ever stood
by his flock. When the dying peasant sought the consolations
of religion, the priest was ever ready to visit him, and to brave
the dangers, and defy the penalties, with which he was threatened
by the law if he dared to do his duty. As the priests lived for
the people, so they lived by the people. How little soever an
Irish peasant might possess, both his duty and his inclination
made him happy in sharing that little with his priest. The
common part they had so long borne in great dangers and in
heavy sorrows had linked the bonds that bound the pastor
to his flock more closely in Ireland than in other countries.
When, early in the present century, persecution slowly relaxed
its grasp, the clergy began little by little to take a share in
the public affairs of the country. The bad feeling that existed
between the upper and the lower orders was one that, for mis-
taken purposes of their own, successive governments had never
lost an opportunity of encouraging. There is always a large
number of persons in the world whom it is easy to persuade
that what is must be. Animosities of class against class had
been of such long standing in Ireland, that they had grown to
be, as it were, institutions of the country. The Catholic clergy.

350 The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right.

whose sympathy was altogether with the people, were of neces-
sity often brought into public collision with the gentry. They
and the gentry regarded every political, nay, almost every so-
cial, question from an opposite point of view. On every subject
their feelings, as well as their opinions, were different. It is an
old observation, that tyranny tends to produce reciprocal hatred
in the oppressor and the oppressed. The hatred of the tyrant
for the slave, though it may arise from deeper and more secret
springs of human nature, is as much the inevitable result of
tyranny as that of the slave for the tyrant. In Ireland the
gentry, as a body, had ever been ranged on the side of the
oppressors, the Catholic clergy on that of the oppressed ; and
neither party exhibited an exception to the general rule. It
must not, however, be forgotten that amongst the Protestant
nobility and gentr}^ of Ireland there were to be found many-
humane, just, and truly patriotic men, who had long seen in-
justice to the sufferers, as well as a bar to national prosperity,
in the gross treatment to which their Catholic fellow-country-
men had for generations been subjected. Unpopular as such
views were amongst persons of their own order, these men were
neither afraid nor ashamed to express an open sjonpathy with
the Catholic party, and to cooperate actively with it, when the
business of extorting emancipation from the Government was
at length really taken up by the people themselves. Incal-
culably useful, however, as the assistance of such men was in
the struggle for freedom, and lasting as should be the recollec-
tion of their services amongst those for whose sake they joined
in fighting a most unpopular battle, we must nevertheless re-
member that to the priests of Ireland, more than to any other
class in the country, the credit is due of having achieved their
own and their people's independence. The battle of emancipa-
tion was a severe one ; it was fought by combatants whose hos-
tility was of long standing ; and it was gained by that party to
whom triumph was then a novelty. Viewing the event in its
bearings on the political future of Ireland, one of its most re-
markable features was the proof it gave of the enormous power
of the people when combined in action under the guidance of
their clergy, and with a just and desirable object to contend
for. Popular power may have been abused in Ireland, as power
of all kinds is ever liable to be abused. The influence of the
Catholic priesthood may not on all occasions have been exerted
in the manner and for the objects that a more prudent discre-
tion and a farther-seeing policy would have recommended. But
to err is human ; and in matters of political conduct no one lays
claim to infallibility.

Ireland has been not unaptly described as a huge ano-

The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right, 351

maly. In considering her social state it is not always easy to
distinguish effects from causes, or causes from effects. Religion
and politics are so mixed up together that it is often diflB.cult to
draw the line between them. To treat of Ireland as she is
without allusion to what she has been, would be absurd. To
omit, in discussing her condition, all mention of religion and of
religious differences, would be to ignore the existence of the
source from which her principal misfortunes have sprung.
There can be no possible doubt that almost all the present mis-
fortunes of Ireland can be traced to past misgovernment by
England. We should, however, be unwilling to go the length
of saying that the continued existence of some of these mis-
fortunes is not attributable to the Irish themselves. It is sel-
dom, if ever, that a great public evil or a great public disorgani-
sation exists, without there being faults on more sides than one.
We believe that this is now the case in Ireland. On what side
soever the preponderance of the guilt may lie, all parties in the
country — the government, the gentry, the parsons, the priests,
and the people — must share the blame for its present social
condition. Their fault, we suppose, consists chiefly in this, that
in Ireland every man attributes, and unfortunately believes
himself right in attributing, the existence of almost every social
grievance that can be named to the agency of any other class in
the community rather than of that to which he himself belongs.
The gentry censure the ineradicable lawlessness of the people,
backed and encouraged by what they consider the self-seeking
democratic turbulence of the priesthood. The peasantry and
small-farming class have a vague, indefinite idea that " it is all
the fault of England," and that under a French despotism or
an American republic things would not be as they are. The
priests divide the blame between the exterminating, papist-
hating landlords and the British Government of the day, irre-
spectively of the party that may be in power ; and they cannot
yet bring themselves to believe in the possibility of any of the acts
of the English Government being done bond fide for the benefit
of Ireland. The Protestant clergy, like the gentry, find a most
useful scapegoat in their brethren of the rival religion , forget-
ting that the very fact of their own existence as ministers of a
Church maintained, in defiance of right and justice, as a state
establishment for the sole benefit of a small minority, is a stand-
ing wrong and insult to four-fifths of the population. As to
England, her press, and her governments, we believe that in
the present day their chief fault lies in querulously blaming the
discontent and mistrust of the Irish priests and people, without
making sufficient allowance for the causes that have given rise
to those feelings ; and, above all, in persistently ignoring the

352 The Irish Exodics and Tenant Right,

patent fact — a fact that must sooner or later be recognised —
that Ireland is in truth a Catholic country, and should be treated
as such.

Like many other popular cries, that of "security for the
tenant^'' has found its chief enemies amongst those who pro-
fessed to be its warmest friends. We believe the literal and
simply accurate definition of a tenant's right to be this, " that
the permanent value which has been superadded to a farm
by an outlay of the tenant's capital, skill, or labour, ought
legally to be the tenant's property; and that, whether the
tenant's tenure may have been by lease or at will, he ought
to be entitled by law, at the expiration of that tenure, to re-
cover from his landlord a just remuneration for the said out-
lay." The late Mr. Sharman Crawford stated the principles of
his tenant-right measure in the following words : " That all
improvements of the soil, and all works of every description by
means of which the annual or letting value or fee-interest of the
premises shall be, or shall have been, increased, and which shall
be, or shall have been, made at the cost or by the labour of the
tenant, or purchased, or inherited by him from his predecessors,
shall be taken to be the property of such tenant ; . . . . and that
no person in occupation of land or premises, being tenant thereon,
and having made improvements of the nature aforesaid, shall be
evicted therefrom unless he shall first have received from his
landlord, or from the incoming tenant, fair compensation for all
labour and capital expended in improvements, of the nature
hereinbefore stated, and which the law shall declare to be the
property of the tenant." JSTo doubt the foregoing definitions
fall far short of many of the claims for legislative interference
that have, from time to time, and from various quarters, been
urged on the tenant's behalf; but it would be difficult to prove
that the claim as originally set up amounted to more than this.
Moreover, almost every advocate of tenant right with whom we
have discussed the question, when closely pressed as to what
protection the legislature could be expected to give the tenant,
has ended by narrowing to this compass opinions that may pos-
sibly have started from a principle involving little less than
communism.

Now, supposing the demand for legislative interference
between landlord and tenant never to have gone further than
the foregoing definitions would warrant, a reasonable or honest
man could hardly object to such legislation being carried into
effect. The justice of the principle has been indeed acknow-
ledged by three successive administrations, which have intro-
duced into Parliament bills founded on and in accordance with
it. It is not our wish to impugn the motives of those who

The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right, S^o

opposed these measures on the plea of their not being sufficiently-
liberal to the tenant ; but it is an undoubted fact that it was a
section of the popular party and their representatives, and not
the British House of Commons, that was and is accountable for
the absence, during the last ten years, of at least a moderate
legislative protection to the industrious and improving tenant.
Some of those who professed to advocate the tenant's cause^ both
in Ireland and in Parliament, made on his behalf demands of
such a nature that to have acceded to them would have been —
at any rate, according to English notions — to annihilate the
rights of property. One would have thought it must be self-
evident — if Ireland and England are to receive their laws
from the same Parliament — that to make " perpetual fixity of
tenure," and " compulsory valuation of land,' 'leading principles
in the ultimatum of the tenant-right party, was practically to
prevent any settlement whatever of the tenant-right question
by the British House of Commons.^

Among the mischievous results of demanding a recognition of
these impracticable principles as the right of the tenant, has been
the creating of false notions, and the raising of delusive hopes,
in the minds of the Irish tenantr j^. They were told, with truth,
that it was an injustice for any man to have the power of eject-
ing a tenant from his farm, and appropriating its increased
value, without any repayment for his outlay, whether of labour
or capital, by which that increase of value had been created.
"With apt and interested scholars it was no difficult matter to
carry this teaching a little further. To dispossess an improving
tenant without fair compensation was an admitted injustice.
Strictly speaking, the injustice lay in the want of compensation ;
but the real practical injury to the tenant was the fact of being-
dispossessed.

]^ow the best friends of the Irish tenant must allow that
there are fewer of the small land-holders who (in the sense that
any tenant-right bill could recognise) have hitherto been im-
proving tenants than there are of the reverse. Any legislation,
therefore, that merely gave the tenant a property in his bona
fide improvements could be a boon, at the present moment, only

5 Theories of this nature received a high philosophical sanction from the
writings of Mr. J. S. Mill. His proposed remedy for the agrarian difficulties of
Ireland, viz. that " the whole of her land should be made by Act of Parliament
the property of the occupiers, subject to the rent then paid, as a fixed rent-
charge," was in those days often quoted. Even now he is occasionally cited as
an authority by the very few persons who still hold these generally exploded
opinions, and who either have not seen or ignore the practical recantation of
them which Mr. Mill has made in his edition of 1862, where he says that " Ire-
land no longer requires what are called heroic remedies ;" and again, " that the
opinions he expressed before 1856 he now feels are no longer susceptible of
practical application" (fifth edition, p. 407).

354 The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right.

to tlie minority of the tenant class. The larger number of the
cottiers and small farmers, not having made any improvements,
would be unaffected by the protecting law, and would be as
liable as ever to unrecompensed eviction. Can it then be a
matter of surprise that, when certain of the popular leaders in
Ireland promulgated the doctrine that " the land was made for
those who live on it,'* they found in that class many willing dis-
ciples ? Is it wonderful that, in a country where eviction means
either perpetual expatriation or perpetual pauperism, a law could
easily be represented as being unjust which left in the hands of
an often hostile minority an almost irresponsible power over
every thing short of the very existence of their fellow-men ? We
are not maintaining that these views are just, or that any legis-
lation founded on them is either possible or to be desired ; but we
cannot discuss the practicability of any settlement of the land-
question without bearing in mind their existence. It must also
be remembered that such theories as to the rights of property,
however fallacious, are not peculiarly Irish ; and that it is not
many years since a party who held somewhat similar views was
so numerous and so violent in England as to threaten the peace
of London. Now, although it may not be surprising that these
ideas became popular amongst a certain interested class in Ire-
land, it seems evident that no reasonable man could expect them
to be recognised by the legislature. If any English or Scottish
land-holder were to start such a theory as that of fixity of tenure,
he would be scouted even by his own class as a revolutionist.

Leaving, therefore, the Irish parliamentary representatives
altogether out of consideration, is it not plain that the promul-
gation of such views by the advocates of the Irish tenant can
have no other effect than to disgust the British portion of Par-
liament with the whole question ? The House of Commons has
frequently shown great willingness, not only to discuss" the
reasonable demands of the Irish tenant, but to legislate in his
favour. But when it sees the original demand of " compensa-
tion for improvements" (to which no honest man could object)
lost, as it were, amongst a host of claims founded on principles
totally adverse to all received notions of the rights of property,
it feels disposed to look on the entire agitation as a sham, and
to place it on the already well-filled shelf of forgotten, or soon
to be forgotten, Irish grievances.

There are amongst those who have studied this question
some who think that the tenant-right custom of Ulster would,
if extended to, and legally enforced in, the south and west of
Ireland, be in itself a satisfactory and a sufficient solution of
the land-question. The correctness of this view is by no means
obvious. The Ulster custom no doubt originated in the idea of

The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right, 355

allowing the outgoing to receive from the incoming tenant the
value of the unexhausted improvements made by the one, and
about to be enjoyed by the otljjer. It was in principle merely
an arrangement to compensate a departing tenant for improve-
ments. As such it was perfectly just and fair. But in its practi-
cal working, there arise cases without number where no improve-
ments have been made during a tenancy, and yet where the right
to "sell his good-wiir* is claimed by, and often allowed to, the
outgoing tenant. In all these cases it is evident that the tenant
has no just claim whatever to this indulgence ; and, if he make
such a claim, he is in truth asking for what is his landlord's and
not his. Where this tenant-right custom is in force, a tenant-at-
will holding, let us say, ten acres at a pound an acre, and never
having done any thing to add permanently to its value, considers
himself hardly used if his landlord refuses him permission to dis-
pose of his interest. He knows that, if he were allowed to sell,
he would probably get 501. or 60?., perhaps 100/. for it, such
sums being not at all unfrequently paid for the mere possession
of small farms let at an ordinary rent and from year to year.
He proclaims this fact to his landlord, and bases on it his
claim for what he (of course incorrectly) calls tenant-right.
When doing this, he seems entirely to forget that the only
reasonable deduction to be drawn from his case is, that the
farm he holds at ten pounds a year is considered by a certain
number of his neighbours to be worth twelve or fifteen. It is
both a remarkable and unfortunate peculiarity of these dealings,
that when the small farmers make these bargains there is too
little consideration whether the land is in a good or in an ex-
hausted state. It frequently occurs that the possession of a
farm completely run out will fetch as large a price as that of
a farm of equal size in reasonably good condition. This is
unfortunate in several respects. While, on the one hand,
the custom of allowing a tenant, when leaving a farm held
at will, to dispose of the increased value created by his own
labour or capital, would be a strong inducement to exertion,
on the other hand, the certainty that even if his land deterio-
rates in value during his tenancy he will be equally sure not
to be a pauper when leaving it, is a great temptation to idle-
ness. Moreover, this too common perversion of the tenant-right
principle is open to the grave objection that it impoverishes
the incoming tenant, and by lessening his capital lessens his
chances of working his farm at a profit. Again, it must be re-
membered that if the tenant-right custom of Ulster were to be
now extended to, and enforced in, the south and west of Ire-
land— if every tenant in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught were
to become legally entitled to dispose of his good-will to the
VOL. IV. h h

356 The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right,

highest bidder — probably one-half of these tenants would be
acquiring a property in that to which the}'- had no just claim,
inasmuch as at least one-half of the farms in Ireland have
changed hands within the last twenty-five years, and their
actual occupiers neither built the houses thej' live in, nor in-
herited nor purchased them from their predecessors. There
is yet another argument against allowing the indiscriminate
privilege of selling the good-will of farms. It is the likelihood,
in a country still in a state of transition, of jeopardising the
just rights of the land-owners. We will suppose a tenant to
have purchased for twenty pounds the good-will of a farm,
either in a remote district, or during a period of agricultural
depression, subject to a rent which (time and place being
considered) was its fair letting value at the time. He has
gone on for a dozen years in the usual slovenly agricultural
fashion of his neighbourhood — one year of potatoes and three
years of oats — the land at the end of the time being, so far as
his labour or exertion is concerned, not a whit better than
when he took it. But during the course of this dozen years
the enterprise of the local proprietors has caused a railway to
penetrate into this remote district ; and markets that were
inaccessible to its inhabitants are brought to their doors. Or
the times have improved; potatoes are no longer blighted;
distemper has ceased to decimate the pigs. In a word, the
value of the possession is increased ; the " good-will" that then
sold for twenty pounds would now sell for a hundred. These
changes have taken place, on the hypothesis, from the mere
march of time, and through the force of circumstances entirely
uncontrolled by the tenant. He can in justice urge no claim
to benefit by them; and yet that "custom" which "tends to
make the proprietor a mere rent- charger on his estate*^ will
certainly be quoted by the tenant in bar of his landlord's just
rights. From all these considerations it appears that, while
the settlement of the land- difficulty on the principle of " com-
pensation for improvement" is a matter of urgent importance,
the universal acceptance of the Ulster tenant-right custom, as
it exists in practice as distinct from theory, would be little real
benefit to either the owners or the occupiers of land in Ireland.
In the introduction to a very valuable compilation of Papers,
Letters, and Speeches on the Irish Land- Question, lately pub-
lished by Mr. Sergeant Shee (now Mr. Justice Shee), the follow-
ing suggestive remarks occur : " Now that all have become wiser
by experience, a government assured of the undivided support
of the Irish Liberal representation might not, on the demand of
the Irish people, be indisposed to resume, and might see its duty
and interest in resuming, a well-drawn unassailable bill, perfect

The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right, 357

us a legal instrument in all its parts, to which the House of
Commons on the report of a Select Committee, the most emi-
nent statesmen and jurisconsults on both sides of the House,
three successive governments, and many, as I had the means
of knowing, of the more considerable Anglo-Irish proprietors
and their agents, have already set the seal of their approval."
In our opinion, it rests mainly with the leaders of the popular
party in Ireland whether a bill destined to better the condition
of the improving tenant can be carried through Parliament or
not. It will be necessary, to begin with, that those who demand
legislation should show themselves to be really in earnest. To
this end they must, in the first place, define clearly and precisely
what it is they want ; and they must confine their demands to
what, in all reasonable probability, a British House of Commons
maybe persuaded that it would be just to grant. Having deter-
mined on a fixed course of action with regard to this question,
they will have to see that their representatives in Parliament
honestly follow that course. At home they will have to use all
the influence that can be brought to bear on the people, to undo
the mischief that has unfortunately been done by the discussion
of those extravagant theories which have been mixed up with
the tenant-right question. Of these requisites the last will, we
fear, be found the most difficult of attainment. Its necessity
is evident ; for unless it can be shown that reasonable legis-
lation is likely to put a stop to querulous agitation, a great
inducement to statesmen to take up the matter will be want-
ing. Of its difficulty, it requires a very slight knowledge of
human nature to be aware. Men are ever ready enough to
believe that their misfortunes are caused by others rather than
by themselves ; and the long-cherished belief in the existence
of a grievance is always hard to dispel. The Irish tenantry
have been taught to believe that their position as to their
legal rights is far worse than that of the tenant class in Eng-
land; that the law which in England protects, in Ireland
oppresses, the tenant ; that while in England he is safe from
capricious eviction, in Ireland he is daily liable to it ; that
whilst the Irish landlord is a rack-renting tyrant, his English
brother is a mild, humane, disinterested, easy-going man, satis-
fied with a very moderate rent for his land, and ever burning
with anxiety to build barns, byres, and dwelling-houses, at his
own expense, and solely for the benefit of his much-loved tenant.
Now no one, knowing the two countries, requires to be told
that these representations are at least very highly coloured.
It is well known that, though the landlord in England may
build the farmhouses and offices in the first instance, and may
sometimes (according to the custom of the district where his

358 The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right.

property lies) aid in keeping them in repair, while in Ireland
the landlord has hitherto usually left these things to be done
by the tenant, yet the English proprietor receives an ample
equivalent in the much higher rent that his farms produce
than that at which land of the same intrinsic value is gener-
ally let in Ireland.^ Nothing can be more fallacious than the
idea that the j^ower of e\acting an improving tenant in Ireland
is greater than it is in England, or that the English tenant
class are in practice perfectly free from the capricious exercise
of it by their landlords. A very cursory reference to the evi-
dence taken before the Agricultural Customs Committee of the
House of Commons in 1848 will suffice to show that tenants'
grievances are not peculiar to Ireland. A perusal of the Report
of that Committee may also be not without its value to those
who are fond of representing the absence of tenant-right legis-
lation for Ireland as a part and parcel of the anti-Irish policy
of England. For while the evidence taken before the Com-
mittee goes to show, almost without contradiction, that some
legislative interference between owners and occupiers in Eng-
land is much desired by the latter, and although very cogent
arguments were adduced by various witnesses in support
of that view, yet the House of Commons declined to inter-
fere in England, while, as we have before stated, successive
governments have shown their willingness to meet the Irish
tenant at least half-way in his demands for legislative protec-
tion. The discussion raised in the Times within the last few
months by the able letters of " A Practical Farmer,^' and the
prominence lately given to views somewhat similar to his at
the meetings of local farming societies in the Yale of Evesham
and several other English districts, show that the desire for
legislation between landlord and tenant is still alive amongst
the farming classes in this country.

The circumstance we have mentioned with regard to the
wide-spread desire for a tenant-right bill for England amongst
English tenants-at-will, and the fact of Parliament having

^ This statement may surprise some of our Irish readers ; but we can never-
theless assure them of its correctness. People talking loudly about English and
Irislx rents arc liable to forget the great difference between the area of an acre in
England and an acre in Ireland, and the consequent fact that 25s. per acre in
England means 21. per acre in Ireland. Now 2 Is. -would be a low acreablc aver-
age rent for medium land in England, while 35.v. would be a decidedly high one
for medium land in Ireland; Again, it must be remembered that in England, as
a rule, the tithe and the entire poor-rate are paid by the tenant ; while iu Ireland
the entire tithe and half the poor-rate are paid by the landlord. We should be
below the mark in putting these two items at less than7i per cent on the aver-
age Irish rental, while from 5 to 7 per cent is allowed to be an ample annual
deduction for farmstead maintenance, repairs, and insurance on the best-managed
estates in England*

The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right, 359

declined to grant their prayer, althougli tliey may be proofs
that, in this matter at least, Ireland has not been treated with
less consideration than England, must not be looked on as ar-
guments against the justice of the Irish tenant's demand for
legislative interference on his behalf. It may be perfectly true
that land of the same intrinsic value lets for less rent in Ire-
land than in England, partly in consequence of the necessary
buildings being erected and maintained by the landlord in the
latter country, and by the tenant in the former. Still, as the
law does not in either case give the tenant any security for an
outlay of his capital, it is evident that the hardship he suffers
must be greater where it is not the general custom for the
landlord to erect the usual farmhouses and offices, than where
it is the custom. The Irish tenant, therefore, is substantially
injured by a state of the law v/hich gives him no legal security
for his outlay of labour or capital in those impro\'ements of a
permanent nature which, according to the general custom of
the country, must be made by him, if made at all. Possibly
the injury he suffers may at times have been exaggerated, and
its discussion may have been made a vehicle for attacks on
Saxon rule and Saxon rulers, the acrimony of which may have
gone far to embitter party feelings on the subject ; but never-
theless the grievance remains. Successive governments have
admitted the justice, if not the necessity, of a change in the
law ; and yet the law is still unchanged.''' An acknowledged
injustice to occupiers of land is allowed to remain unheeded
in the midst of a population who live by the land alone, and
who are prone enough to make the most of grievances for
which England can in any way be made accountable. Is it
wise or statesmanlike to treat the demand for that which has
been admitted to be simple justice with the supercilious con-
tempt with which, in a late session of Parliament, the men-
tion of tenant-right legislation was met by the present Chief
Secretary for Ireland ? Should it not rather be the policy of
the government, if a superstructure of imaginary grievance has

' We are of course aware that Mr. Cardwell's bill was intended to meet,
and is, we believe, supposed by the present Chief Secretary for Ireland to have
sufficiently met, the needs of the Irish tenant. But a law which has been three
years on the statute-book, and of which nevertheless advantage has been taken
in but one solitary instance, can hardly be seriously spoken of as a practical
remedy for this long-admitted evil. As Judge Shee says in the work already
quoted, •' It is disheartening to reflect that . . . the government of a country
in which six millions of British subjects are mainly dependent on agriculture,
. . . and iu which the indispensable instrumenta of successlul cultivation are
provided at the expense of the tenant, should not have influence enough to
carry to the foot of the throne a law holding out to him any better encourage-
ment to employ his labour and capital in a manner so profitable . . . than an
annuity for such portion of a term of twenty-five years as may be unexpired at
his eviction of 7/. 2*. for every 100/. worth of improvement."

360 The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right,

been raised on t"he foundation of a substantial wrong, to over-
tbrow the imaginary, by removing the substantial, injustice?

It may perbaps be doubted whether the passing of a tenant-
right bill would materially affect the existence of agrarian
crime in Ireland. It is certainly both possible and probable
that no mere law would immediately have that effect ; but it
is also certain that the crimes in question never will be put
down until a fair measure of tenant right has been passed.
It is true that, with a tenant-right bill, our hopes may be
disappointed; but, without it, they certainly must be. The
ultimate destiny of agrarianism will mainly depend on two
contingencies: first, whether the leaders of the tenant-right
agitation will agree in good faith to accept as a full measure of
justice a bill founded on the principles of Mr. Sharman Craw-
ford, to which a formal adhesion was given by the successive
ministries of Lord Derby, Lord Aberdeen, and Lord Palmer-
ston ; and secondly, whether, having accepted such a measure,
they will honestly endeavour, as a reasonable sequel to it, to
wean the minds of the people from that querulous bitterness
that marks their present feelings towards the owners of land.
We have heard an Irish landlord described by a peasant, with
something of that peculiar poetry of expression that seems na-
tural to the Celtic tone of thought, as *' the m^n for whom the
grass grows." This expression is eminentlj^ characteristic of
the feeling with which in Ireland the man who tills the soil
has been taught to regard the man who owns it. " You do
nothing — I do all ; and yet you get the lion-'s share of the
profits !" As long as this feeling survives, so long will there
still be danger of recurring agrarian outrage. Now there are
some who believe this feeling to be ineradicable. We are not
of the number. We conceive that the future peacefulness of
Ireland will depend on the possibility of bringing public opi-
nion, which now seems to sympathise with agrarian crime, into
unmistakeable opposition to it. This change will be extremely
difficult to produce ; but there is no reason to despair as to its
possibility. It is but a few years since the Irish were perhaps
the most drunken nation in Europe. In those days, a man who
went home sober from fair or market was looked on as having
almost disgraced his manhood. Public opinion was then on the
side of the drunkard ; or, at least, it was not against him. Yet
the labours of one earnest man completely altered the character
of Ireland in this respect. Any one who, in 1838, had ven-
tured to foretell that in five years drunkenness would be almost
unknown, would have been looked on as a wild enthusiast ; yet
such was the case in 1843. It is not impossible to eradicate
agrarian crime, any more than it was impossible to eradicate

The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right, 361

drunkenness ; but before this can be done, it must be clearly,
boldly, unmistakeably shown that a spirit of reformation — a
spirit similar in its earnestness to that which animated Father
Mathew — animates all the political leaders of the Irisb people.
And the first and most needful step towards arousing a spirit
that would inculcate obedience to the law and a reverence for
justice, is so to legislate that law and justice may be one.

Whenever the subject of Irish crime is under discussion,
great stress is always laid, and with much reason, on the dis-
heartening difficulty of obtaining evidence against criminals, and
more particularly against the perpetrators of agrarian outrages.
For this cause, this kind of crime sets all reasoning derived from
the means of repressing crime in other countries completely at
fault. Various causes have helped to produce this peculiarity.
Of these the chief is distrust — a chronic and universal distrust.
In Ireland men have no confidence in their neighbours. Ca-
tholics, Protestants, landlords, tenants, employers, labourers, —
all distrust one another. But while to a considerable extent
this feeling is common to all classes, amongst the peasantry
it goes deepest and reaches farthest. Long nsed to sufier from
deceit and oppression, they can hardly bring themselves to
believe that any one with whom they have dealings is acting
entirely without guile, or saying neither more nor less than he
means. "Divide et impera^^ — the fatal maxim of generations
of British statesmen — has been the motto of the policy which
has produced this almost universal evil. To maintain the
unjust ascendancy of one class and party, all others have been,
according to the changing circumstances of the hour, op-
pressed or flattered, tyrannised over or cajoled. Such a training
could have but one result. When we reflect that not a genera-
tion has passed away since the habitual treatment of the Irish
people by England was worse than that of a slave by his master,
we can scarcely be astonished if, in the present day, the Irish
character retain some of the peculiar traits that are the almost
inevitable results of long-continued oppression. It is hard to
expect strict truthfulness or manly independence from the sons
of men to whom the law of the land held out for years the
strongest inducements to domestic treachery, and whom it pun-
ished with unsparing cruelty if they dared to follow the dictates
of their conscience. It is scarcely reasonable to look for sincere
respect for the law, and confidence in its administrators, amongst
a people within whose own memory a portion of the penal code
was still in force. To the peasant of to-day the law declares it
to be a crime to harbour or protect the perpetrator of agrarian
crime. To the father of that peasant the law equally declared
it to be a crime to harbour or protect the Catholic priest. In

S62 The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right,

these days the most fanatical bigot dares not place the two on
the same level ; but the peasant cannot yet have forgotten that
the law he is expected to reverence has dared to do so.

It is true that the British statute-book is no longer disgraced
by the existence of these iniquitous laws. It may be also true
that the spirit from which they had their origin has died out
amongst most men of intellect and education, and is, if not dead,
at least dormant in the masses. But it is equally true that the
recollection of the days of persecution is still vivid in the mind
of the Irish Catholic. Such a recollection can only be obliterated
by a steady course of just, liberal, and even indulgent rule,
patiently and hopefully persevered in, till, whether within a few
years as we trust, or in a longer period as is possible, it reaps
its reward. It can hardly be expected that a quarter of a cen-
tury of moderately just government can wipe out the moral
stains left on the national character by three centuries of cease-
less persecution. There is unfortunately a large party of Irish-
men which still, even in these days, refuses to believe that the
feeling of England towards Ireland has undergone any real
change since the days when the penal laws were in force, and
which perpetually mistrusts the Irish policy of all English
governments, merely because it is their Irish policy. The exist-
ence of such a feeling is a great misfortune for Ireland ; if for
no other reason, yet for one that may fairly have some weight
with even the most anti-Saxon of Irish patriots — the more so
perhaps as it is not very flattering to England. It is this: that
in these days no party, however wrong-headed, any longer pre-
tends that it is the interest of England to oppress Ireland. That
idea was once current ; and Ireland was oppressed accordingly.
But now that it is admitted to be the interest of England to treat
Ireland with justice, it is only consequent to suppose that Ireland
will be so treated. Benefits conferred from such a motive may
perhaps have no claim to a return of gratitude ; but they are
none the less benefits ; and it is a mistaken policy to treat them
as though they were injuries. In referring, therefore, as we
have done, to the past history of Ireland, and in tracing to that
source the chief evils from which she now suffers, we are far
from being actuated by any desire to make her past misgovern-
ment by England unduly prominent, or to encourage an anti-
English feeling amongst Irishmen. Our object has rather
been to prevent Englishmen from forgetting what the anti-
Irish tirades of the English press make it evident that some
amongst us have forgotten, — that to the unjust folly of our own
forefathers may be mainly attributed the existence of those Irish
faults which we in this country are now the loudest and least
sparing in condemning. The best and happiest change that

The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right, 'r^Qo

could befall both, nations would be, that Irishmen should cease
to remember tlie past history of their country, and that Eng-
lishmen should resolve never to forget it.

Till agrarian crime is uprooted, Ireland will never be tho-
roughly prosperous ; and it never will be uprooted until the tone
of Irish, feeling towards England undergoes a radical improve-
ment. Towards effecting this, the first and most essential change
must be for the English Government to show unmistakeably that
they are determined to treat Irishmen and Englishmen accord-
ing to the same measure of evenhanded justice. They must
make it plain to Irishmen of every creed and every party that
for the future there are to be no religious or party tests recog-
nised in the administration of Ireland; and that all Irish-
men, whether Protestants or Catholics, are in truth — and not in
name only — to enjoy civil and religious liberty. IN'ow, so long
as the Catholics of Ireland have to support their own Church
and four-fifths of the Established Church as well, no man can
reasonably maintain that the Protestant and the Catholic are
equal in the eye of the law. While the Catholic demand for
freedom of education is contemptuously refused, it cannot be
said that there is religious equality amongst Irishmen. ' A
principle which the legislature has admitted to be just for the
Catholics of England cannot possibly be unjust for the Catho-
lics of Ireland.

There are plenty of people who will tell us that there is
no use in trying to conciliate the Irish priesthood or the Irish
people, and that disloyalty and hatred of British rule have too
firm a hold on their minds ever to be eradicated. We do not be-
lieve that it is so. But if we did believe it we would answer,
in the words of Mr. Goldwin Smith, that " when the Pro-
testants complained of the Catholic clergy as being rebels by
nature, it was assuredly they that had done their best to make
them so;'' and again that, *' if there be any disaffection to the
state among the Catholics of Ireland, it is because the state
still gives them just grounds for disaffection." In Canada the
Catholic hierarchy and clergy, many of them Irishmen, are con-
tented citizens and loyal subjects. Their brethren in Ireland
might be, and in good time we trust will be, the same. At any
rate, it is only reasonable to give a fair trial before final con-
demnation ; and that fair trial the Catholics of Ireland have
not yet had. So long as the Church of the minority is sup-
ported by the majority, and facilities for education of which
they can conscientiously avail themselves are granted to the
Protestant and Presbyterian and refused to the Catholic, it is
false to say that all means have been tried to pacify Ireland.
When the grant of a charter to the Catholic University has

36if The Irish Exodus and Tenant Right.

given to Irish Catholics similar educational facilities to those
found by Protestants in Trinity College, Dublin, and in the
Queen^s University ; when tenants have been secured by law
in the possession of what politicians of all parties have admitted
to be their just right ; when the Protestant Church Establish-
ment has ceased to iusult the Catholics of Ireland, and her reve-
nues have been allotted either to the support of the poor or to
some other object from which all classes and all creeds can
(without a possibility of danger to their complete independ-
ence) derive a benefit proportionate to their numbers ; — when
these legislative remedies have been tried, and tried in vain, it
will be quite time enough to despair of the future of Ireland.
If an unmistakeable inclination to legislate for Ireland in this
spirit were shown by the Government ; if it were made clear
to the Irish Catholic that neither his birth nor his creed is for
the future to be any bar to his perfect social equality with his
British fellow-subjects ; if the childish insult cast on the Ca-
tholic hierarchy and priesthood by the extension of the Eccle-
siastical Titles Bill to Ireland were atoned for, and a reasonable
recognition were made by Government of their proper status
and dignity as ministers of the people's Church ; — if all these
things were done, Ireland in the next ten years would make
rapid strides in peacefulness, civilisation, and general prospe-
rity. Before, however, this desirable consummation can be
looked for, politicians of every class must resolve to forget the
prejudices of the past. Until all parties consent to approach
the discussion of Irish politics with less of bitterness and more
of reasonable concession to the feelings, and even to the preju-
dices, of others than is at present the case, the questions re-
quiring settlement will remain unsettled, and the social evils
arising out of their existence will continue to retard the pros-
perity and to disgrace the character of the country.

[ 365 ]

THE SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN MOVEMENT IN GERMANY.

Although there is scarcely a politician now who does not con-
sider himself competent to give a very decided judgment on the
dispute between Denmark and the Duchies, it is but a few
months ago that the question was looked on as so intricate and
complicated that those who discussed it in speeches and in the
press were not in the least ashamed to confess that they did not
understand it. At first a mere captatio benevolentice, the acknow-
ledgment passed into an expression of unpardonable frivolity as,
day after day, it became more obvious that the peace of Europe
was threatened by the growing excitement in Germany. x\nd
yet it must be admitted that the controversy is one which can-
not be solved by even the fullest acquaintance with its legal
points. The maxim fiat justitia ruat coelum is as unpractical in
this as in other great conjunctures of European politics ; and
there is a sense, therefore, in which we must allow that men are
justified in forming an opinion on the general question without
having mastered all the details. But the ultimate consequences
of the dispute bear so decisively on many questions in which
Germany and England have a common interest, that it is an evil
of the deepest gravity for the two nations to approach each other,
at the very opening of it, under the influence of prejudices and
antipathies.

It is impossible to judge the question honestly or justly
without knowing the character and condition of the parties that
divide opinion in Germany. We need not now discuss the fami-
liar question of the claims of Schles wig- Hoist ein, or the several
views on it that are current among the Germans, or the innu-
merable solutions of it that have been proposed. It is of greater
practical importance to enquire into the state of the different
German parties at the moment when the death of King Frede-
rick of Denmark suddenly brought the conflict on them, and
into the manner in which they received, and were affected by,
that event. Of course, it is to be understood that in speaking
of " parties^' we mean to indicate not only the various sections of
opinion among the educated classes, but also those larger political
groups which include the governments of the several states.

After the first momentary unanimity, the Schleswig-Holstein
question appears to have increased, instead of diminishing, the
dissensions of Germany. All the ideas of German politics are
in a state of fermentation. Revolution and Legitimacy, the Con-
federation and the Great Powers, the triple league, the Con-

366 The Sclileswig-Holstebi Movement hi Germaiiy,

federation of the Rhine, and the Hepublic, are advocated in the
press, and invoked as the true solution of all existing problems.
This shows that the position of the Duchies is not merely one of
the qnestions which Germany has to work out, but is, in a sense,
the German question itself All Europe is pervaded by the feel-
ing that Sehleswig-Holstein involves Germany — that the crisis
embraces the whole country, from the North Sea to the Alps.
The Pentarchy, which, by reducing Germany to a geographical
expression, and making her the passive centre of European poli-
tics, was enabled to deal injustice to nations, lies shattered in
pieces. It has fallen not by the blows of the Germans, but by
its own fault. Through many errors and repeated failures Ger-
many has long striven to become the active centre of Europe ;
and the nations that have hitherto been supreme naturally put
forth their power to resist claims which would deprive them
of their accustomed influence. Despotic France, revolutionary
Italy, Eussia whose grasp of Poland could not be maintained
in presence of a united Germany — all have the same interest,
though from different motives, in thwarting the efforts of Ger-
many to become united, powerful, and active. The opposition
of this interest is quite legitimate from the point of view of the
several nations. But so, on the other hand, from their own
point of view, is the common resolve of all parties in Germany
to accomplish the work of creating a great national power. And
this work they have begun to execute with all the resources at
their command.

When the scheme of Federal reform had been frustrated by
Prussia, at the end of last summer, a disintegration of the great
parties immediately began. If it had continued, it would pro-
bably have carried Germany back to thoso minute local discus-
sions between the various governments and their subjects which
formerly neutralised the force and energy of the nation. It
would have given fresh prominence to the agitation and con-
spiracies of demagogues ; and these movements, in spite of their
national aim, would have injured the national cause, just as the
separatist resistance of Prussia prevented the execution of the
reforms which Austria and the other states had prepared. But
the evil was arrested by the speech of Napoleon III. on the 5th
of November, and the death of King Frederick of Denmark on
the 15th. The announcement that French supremacy was to
supersede the balance of the five great powers, and the danger
lest a new Alsace should be severed from Germany for ever, at
once awoke the whole German nation to the consciousness that
the time had come to abandon its passive helplessness, and to
unite in a combined action of princes and people.

This consciousness was not the work or the idea of any party;

The Schlesivig-Holstein Movement in Germany, 367

it was the public sense and instinct of the nation. No one who
knows Germany can doubt that the movement is one of intense
depth and earnestness — a national upheaving, and not merely a
great party measure. The different parties, it is true^ have sinc(^
endeavoured to obtain the control of this vast power, and to fill
their own sails with the strong wind of the public sentiment; but
they did nothing to raise it. And we shall see, as we proceed,
whether their interference did not rather enhance the danger that
the aspirations of Germany would still remain unsatisfied.

When a nation is impelled by some resistless force to the
accomplishment of a long-neglected purpose, there are always
men, or combinations of men, who press on beyond it, or who
withstand it, covering their own objects by an exaggerated pro-
fession of zeal in the nev/ cause. Cowardice, indolence, narrow-
ness, and the dread of all energetic action, for a time stand in
the way, especially among a people so little used to general
politics as the Germans. There have been such symptoms in the
present movement. Unquestionably the new phase into which
the death of King Frederick brought the Schleswig-Holstein
question came upon Germany by surprise, though every politician
knew that sooner or later it must recur in that very form. But
the position of aftairs was soon understood; and instead of
waiting, after their ancient custom, for their governments to take
the initiative, and losing the result in disputing about the end,
and the manner, and the means, the Germans resolutely cast
aside all secondary interests, and concentrated their activity on
one distinct object — to reject the treaty of London, and its obli-
gations for Germany, and to obtain the independence of the
Duchies under their native sovereign.

It is not our intention to examine the reception which this
clear and definite programme encountered in Europe. We are
dealing only with the internal history of Germany under the
influence of the new phase of the Schleswig-Holstein question.
The wish of the German people was to aim exclusively at the
independence of the now emancipated Duchies, and at their union
with Germany. But Austria and Prussia saw that the literal
adoption of this policy would be a challenge to all Europe, and
would surrender the principle of that influence which their own
position in Europe enabled them to exercise on the politics of the
Confederation. Their unwillingness to sacrifice this influence to
a sudden storm of public opinion is as reasonable as their resolu-
tion not to pledge themselves to a European war, which they
would have to plunge into without preparation, and the burden
of which would fall more particularly on them, since they would
be held responsible for its occurrence. They can neither identify
themselves entirely with the German nation, nor live separated

368 The Schleswig-Holstein Movement in Germany,

from it. When the present ag;itation began, its national character
was but dimly understood by several of the smaller governments
which have since — rather from animosity to the allied powers
than from motives of patriotism — become the champions of the
most extreme demands. But the truth was at once perceived at
Berlin, and still more at Vienna ; and neither Austria nor Prussia
had any interest in repressing or opposing the movement.

Let us look for a moment at the state of the Federal system
at the time when King Frederick of Denmark died. For many
years Prussia had treated it as hopeless and untenable ; and she
had accordingly done every thing in her power to baffle the action
and neutralise the authority of the Bund. To the outer world
she presented it as a mere dependency of her own ; and she had
laboured to prevent the accomplishment of any reforms, in order
that nothing might qualify the contempt in which she wished it
to be held at home. Matters had become worse since the meet-
ing of the sovereigns at Frankfort. From that time Prussia had
been in open opposition to the Confederation, and to every
scheme of reform based on its existing laws. In many vexatious
ways she had prevented the success of the reformers. But she
had neither made any separate proposal of her own, nor moved
any amendment to the act which was passed at Frankfort, lest
by so doing she should implicitly recognise the fundamental idea
of the Federal system — the equal rights of all the Confederates.
Austria, on the other hand, had endeavoured to reconcile this
idea with the necessary consideration for the actual inequality
of power between the several states. At the Frankfort meeting
the assent of all the smaller states, except some vassals of Prussia,
had been given to the Austrian reform, on the assumption that
the sacrifice of sovereign independence, which Austria proposed
in favour of the Federal power, was every where sincerely meant.
Austria was commissioned to overcome the resistance of Prussia
by means of a compromise. But Prussia insisted on claiming for
the two great powers a veto in all matters of war or peace; and this
veto, if adopted, would have destroyed the Federal principle, by
sanctioning an Austrian and Prussian supremacy, dividing Ger-
many between those powers, and realising what is known as the
policy of the Main frontier. Chiefly for this reason, the proposal
failed ; and when Austria thereupon convoked the ministers of
those states which had acceded to the Frankfort reform, in order
to carry it out by means of a less comprehensive league — a
league in which Prussia was not included, though her present
position in the existing Confederation was preserved — a new dif-
ficulty suddenly presented itself. It became apparent in the
case of some of the reforming princes themselves that, whatever
might be the energy of the conviction with which they had

The Sclileswig-Holstein Movement in Germany, 369

accepted the Frankfort scheme, it was less powerful than their
dread of action, and their reluctance to make a sacrifice for the
good of the common country. In many of the minor courts it
was pretended that the resistance of Prussia was a decisive im-
pediment to every reform, and therefore a sufficient reason for
inaction ; the pretence was represented as patriotism ; and when
King Maximilian of Bavaria started for Rome, his journey was
regarded as a flight from the necessity of deciding whether the
reform should be practically accomplished, or whether a con-
firmation should be given to the state of things which had been
solemnly pronounced rotten and unendurable. Thus the re-or-
ganisation of the Federal constitution had for the time to be
abandoned ; the Prussian minister triumphed, and was applauded
even by the party of progress in Prussia ; and the Emperor of
Austria found his scheme deserted even by those who had most
warmly embraced it.

These proceedings, sufficiently disguised by patriotic declara-
tions and promises, come down to the time of King Frederick's
death, and had their place among the motives which led the
Emperor of the French to propose a European Congress. Except
in Prussia, in the Nationalverein, which aims at excluding Austria
from Germany, and making the rest of the nation Prussian^ and
among the democrats who speculate on the dissolution of exist-
ing institutions, they caused a general sense of dissatisfaction
and disgust. These feelings had as yet no distinct grounds for
directing themselves against any definite grievance; but they
gave full scope to the influence of revolutionary agitation, urging
the hopelessness of a national reform without the reviving agency
of a radical convulsion. The popular indignation was turned
first against Prussia, for her dogged opposition to any improve-
ment in the system, and then also against the wavering and
shrinking of the middle states from the hopeful promise of the
Frankfort scheme. On the other hand, Austria gained no sym-
pathy ; for the theory of the middle states was, that they had
entrusted her with the office of reconciling Prussia to the pro-
jected reform, although, instead of sustaining her in the negotia-
tions, they had one after another withdrawn from their engage-
ment on particular points, or released themselves by urging the
necessity of postponing active measures until a complete preli-
minary agreement should be established between Vienna and
Berlin.

Under these conditions the great German powers and the Go-
vernments and people of the lesser states encountered the sudden
crisis occasioned by the King of DenmarVs death. From the first,
the Austrian government fdly understood the nature of the en-
thusiastic outbreak, and proceeded in the belief that the nation

370 The ScJdesivig -Hoi stein Movement in Germamj.

could not be pacified or the contest avoided. The Prussian minis-
tvy had its own reasons for regarding the prospect of hostilities
with favour. Both powers^ however, were alike determined not to
provoke the inevitable issue, but to come to it under the most
favourable auspices they could secure, and to prevent it from be-
coming a European war. Though they had so lately been in a
state of violent antagonism on the question of Federal reform, they
soon discovered many points at which their interests thorouglily
coincided. Their recent experience gave them little confidence
in the vigour or independence of the policy of the middle states.
But these states, supported by the great national movement,
now demanded that Prussia and Austria should throw over
their engagements wdth Europe l^y the treaty of London, and
should simply, against the menaces of all Europe, carry out the
measures of the Confederation, which was not bound by that
treaty. There was no assurance, however, that the middle group
would stand by the two powers to the end. The latter, there-
fore, came to the determination to arrest the rising flood by
insisting on the absolutely defensive character of the Federal
constitution. And, as they could neither entirely elude the na-
tional sentiment, nor accept its control over themselves, they
agreed in endeavouring to get the whole afiair into their own
hands. This it was impossible to accomplish without some rude
shocks to the Federal system.

The position of the two great powers was seriously affected
by the attitude of their own subjects. Austria was not directly
concerned in the affairs of Schleswig-Holstein except through
the treaty of London ; but the movement in the German nation
required of her that, as a member of the Confederation, she
should obey the Federal resolutions, and should make war for
the destruction of the treaty, if necessary against the whole of
Europe. But Austria had been deserted by Germany in her own
cause. Her political and economical exclusion from the nation
was constantly demanded by the very party that claimed to be
most purely national, and her recent scheme of German organi-
sation had been thrown over by that other party which professed
to uphold her federal connection with Germany. For these suf-
ficient reasons the enthusiasm did not extend at first to the
German provinces of Austria. Sympathy with the cause of the
Duchies, and anxiety for their deliverance from the spiteful
tyranny of the Danish democracy, were as strong in Austria as
in the rest of Germany ; but the practical, political interest in
the matter grew into importance only in proportion to the part
which the government actually took. Hence it is very remark-
able, and significant of the preponderance of the German element
in Austria, that when the lleichsrath came to discuss the policy

The Schleswig-Holstein Movement in Germany. 371

of Count Rechberg in the Sclileswig-Holstein affair, on the vote
of credit for the federal execution in Holstein, the victory of the
government was accompanied by a schism in Schmerling's com-
pact majority, and many eminent public men expressed their
belief that the ministry had sacrificed the obligations of Austria
as a German state to her position as a great European power.
This schism may hereafter have important consequences in the
internal life of the empirg. The ministry, by its previous policy,
especially by the alliance of the foreign office with the Bismarck
administration in Prussia, had forfeited much of the sympathy of
Germany ; but it now became more popular, and much of its
former prestige was recovered by the subsequent achievements of
the Austrian army in the national cause.

The position of the Prussians towards the Schleswig-Holstein
question is different. They have always claimed to lead Germany,
on the ground of their eminently national spirit; and they have
been in the habit of using the cause of the Duchies to throw dis-
credit on the Diet, to illustrate the impotence of the middle
states, and to represent Austria as the obstacle to a satisfactory
settlement. If, as the popular voice would have it, the course
taken by the several German races with regard to the present
conflict were applied as a test of their patriotism, the Prussians
would not come well out of the trial. By the end of 1863
almost every town in the middle states, especially in Southern
Germany, had declared, either at meetings or by its municipal
organs, that it was ready to make the most extreme sacrifices for
the independence of Schleswig-Holstein under its native prince,
and had begun to collect money, and founded associations to pro-
mote that end. But in Prussia there had been scarcely any
demonstrations of the same kind, except among the students.
Since the beginning of the present year also the Prussians have
remained much more sparing of these manifestations of feeling
than the rest of the Germans, though the Prussian liberal orators
have appeared at meetings in Central Germany, to urge the
adoption of the most extreme resolutions against the policy of
the Great Powers. In the parliament at Berlin the affair of the
Duchies was at first almost ignored, being looked on as an un-
timely interruption of the wordy but unproductive conflict with
the reactionary ministry ; and when some exhibition of patriot-
ism could no longer be decently avoided, the question was treated
much less in the interest of Schleswig-Holstein than as a part
of the Prussian dispute with the Bismarck cabinet. Waldeck,
the democratic leader, declared that no notice ought to be taken
of the Duchies as long as there was no prospect of making them
a Prussian province. When supplies were demanded to enable
the government to execute the military mission it had received

VOL. IV. c c

372 The Schleswig-Holstein Movement in Germany,

from the Diet, they were refused by the House of Deputies. The
vote was disguised as one of want of confidence in the foreign
poKcy of the minister; but it was given in the full consciousness
that he could not be driven from office, and that this defeat
would place him in the dilemma of either neglecting the federal
duties of Prussia, or crowning his many breaches of the consti-
tution by one which would be practically justifiable, and would
inflict a deeper wound than any which ^ad gone before it on the
principle of the constitutional monarchy.

jSFor had the military achievements of the Prussians against
the Danes the same effect as those of the Austrians, in somewhat
reconciling public opinion in Germany to their political conduct.
Indeed, the contrast between the lofty language of the Prussian
commanders and the results they were able to show even caused
some injustice to be popularly done to the valour of the troops,
and kept alive, in the case of Prussia, that suspicion of an under-
standing with Denmark which it was no longer possible for the
most unscrupulous demagogue to breathe against Austria. More-
over, the haughtiness of the Prussian officers provoked perpetual
conflicts with the federal authorities in Holstein ; and these con-
flicts recalled the memory of 1849 too clearly not to lead to the
persuasion that Prussia would again consider the Duchies as a
conquest, made partly against Denmark and partly against the
Confederation, which might be disposed of simply in accordance
with Prussian interests. It was also thought to be a cause for
alarm that, in the Prussian parliament_, the opposition directed
its attacks against individuals only, and seemed blind to the
infraction of the rights of the other German states which was
involved in the independent course of the government.

It is evident, then, that popular opinion did not determine
the policy of the gi-eat German powers ; nor did their parlia-
ments constrain them to pursue any given path or aim, since
the votes of those bodies were only negative, expressing dissatis-
faction with particular ministers, but not suggesting any definite
measures. The smaller states, however, whose policy could only
assert itself through the Diet, were much more extensively con-
trolled by the pressure of the prevailing spirit. It is hard to say
why the movement in these states was more slow to manifest
itself in Northern than in Southern Germany. But it must be
borne in mind that the vote of the Diet on the 7th of December,
on the question of a complete separation between the Duchies
and the Danish monarchy, was decided by a small majority, and
that that majority was composed of northern states which sup-
ported Austria and Prussia in carrying the long-delayed federal
execution, instead of the Bavarian proposal of an occupation for
protecting all the federal rights in the new order of things. At

The Schleswig-Holstein Movement in Germany. 373

that time, indeed, the governments of Southern Germany did not
occupy the advanced position which they afterwards came to hold.
The populations from the first had pressed in that direction ; but
they moderated their warlike ardour and their readiness to make
sacrifices, when, as events proceeded, it became clear that if the
agitators were allowed to lead the movement, it could never attain
its ends without a civil war against the great powers, or an
alliance with France. In either case, it was evident, the inde-
pendence of the lesser states would be destroyed; and the instinct
of self-preservation at last prevailed over the patriotic anxiety
for the inhabitants of the Duchies. The popular feeling in favour
of their complete independence and their adoption into the Con-
federation, where they would necessarily strengthen the purely
German element, is at this moment stronger and more active in
the middle states than in Austria and Prussia. But when the
Bavarian and, still more, the Saxon government cling so firmly
to the inalienable rights of the Duchies, and the legitimacy of the
pretender's claims, and oppose the policy of the two great powers
with so much fanaticism as to be constantly on the verge of war
with them, they are of course influenced by motives that have
little to do with the good cause of Schleswig-Holstein, and the
rightfulness of the Augustenburg succession.

These motives, however, are not the only ones that govern the
conduct of the lesser states ; but they go far to explain the fact
that these states, and especially such of them as are in the South,
have yielded almost without resistance to the impulse of the great
agitation. The death of King Frederick, as we have seen, coincided
in point of time with the collapse of the project of federal reform.
The two extreme parties, the Meindeutsch Nationalverein and the
ffrossdeutsch Reformverein, regarded this collapse as a conjunc-
ture favourable to their radical designs ; but this sentiment was
not a general one. The overwhelming mass of the Germans hold
that the national constitution can only be remodelled on some
scheme which shall harmonise the interests of the petty sove-
reigns with the complicated relations of the great powers ; and
they were persuaded that the princes who had adopted the Aus-
trian scheme at Frankfort had faltered in their patriotic resolu-
tion from no worthier motive than a dread of the sacrifice of
independent authority which the scheme necessarily involved.
When the lesser states excused their refusal to join Austria in
accomplishing the reform without Prussia, by alleging that
nothing could be done until the two great powers had cdme
to an understanding, the allegation was regarded as a sign of
pusillanimous insincerity; since the differences between those
powers are such that an understanding was never to be expected.
The democracy and the adherents of the Prussian supremacy

374 The Schleswig-Holstein Movement in Germany,

were actively endeavouring to make capital out of the position
of affairs. It was now clear, they argued, from the failure of
the reform, that a strong and united Germany could spring only
from a convulsion which should overthrow the princes, or from
the subjugation of the lesser ones under the Prussian power.
All this weakened the monarchical principle in the smaller
states ; but the governments yielded to no illusions. They felt
the absolute necessity of recovering themselves in the eyes of the
nation ; and when the storm burst forth in November, without
any intervention of the great parties, they seized the occasion
Avith extraordinary eagerness, in order to restore the popu-
larity of the central states. In Bavaria, where the enthusiasm
of the people was the most stern and resolute, the government
found an additional inducement to favour it, in the satisfaction
of taking revenge on the Danish royal family for its acceptance
of the Hellenic throne. Later on, however, the policy of the
two great powers towards the Diet threvr the majority, com-
posed of the lesser states, more and more into the background,
and practically deprived them of their equal rights as confeder-
ates ; while the general movement, passing into the hands of the
gi'cat parties, sustained the policy of the federal majority, for
the realisation of which it was ready to create a separate con-
federation of the minor powers. In this position of affairs Ba-
varia stood forward as being, for such an eventuality, the natural
leader of Central Germany; but she began to temporise, and
grew more moderate, when the majority in the Diet became
less united, and the advance of Austria and Prussia removed
the question of the Duchies from the federal jurisdiction into the
region of international law. The agitators and demagogues of
the Nationalverein now sought to rouse the indignation of the
patriots against this apparent lukewarmness of the Bavarians ;
and the Saxon minister. Von Beust, eagerly possessed himself of
the vacant position, at least as far as words could do it. But all
these combinations of the minor states lost much of their effect
in the actual votes of the Diet, and were moreover neutralised
by the progress of events in the field. The conference of min-
isters at Wurzburg was not attended by the minor governments
of Northern Germany, Hanover, Hesse, and Oldenburg; and
its failure demonstrated both the impossibility of organising a
third group of states on strictly national principles, in oppo-
sition to the more scrupulous and cautious European policy of
the great powers, and also the improbability that a union of
those states M^ould ever accomplish its destined mission of medi-
ating between Austria and Prussia.

In the earlier days of the movement the popular agitation
sought, by parliamentary addresses, by meetings, and by every

The Schlesivig-Holstein Movement in Germany, 375

sort of demonstration, to drive the middle states into a violent
antagonism to the great powers in the Confederation, and thus
compelled these powers to undertake the winter campaign across
the Eider, in order to prevent a German, and to localise the
Danish, war. The same agitators now" overwhelm the middle
states Avith abuse and votes of censure for their want of unanimity,
for the inefficacy of their resolutions in the Diet, and for the
failure of their lofty promises. If these zealots had their way,
it is quite possible that we might live to see the armies of Central
Germany falling on the rear of the allies in Schleswig, simply be-
cause the programme of the great powers is less satisfactory for
the national interests than the promises of the minor states.
Urged forward by the popular excitement, and jealous for the
maintenance of their equal position with the great powers in
the Diet, partly influenced by dynastic sympathy with the
Prince of Augustenburg, and partly impressed with the decisive
consequences of the present struggle on their own security
hereafter, the rulers of Central Germany undertook to gratify
the illusions of their subjects by comporting themselves like
great powers. Their hesitating attempt was frustrated by the
rude realities of comparative force; and its failure naturally
brought on them the bitter anger of their own people, whom
the organs of the governments themselves had helped to work
up to their former pitch of excitement and expectation. The
illusion of a third group of states counterbalancing the two great
powers has vanished, though its ghost may long continue to be
called up at intervals, for various purposes and on different sides.
Germany owes this humiliating result chiefly to the two great
parties, both of which were substantially ruined by the failure of
the Act of Reform. The Nationalverein, indeed, had lost its in-
fluence from the beginning of the Bismarck rule in Prussia.
Having made the absorption of Germany by Prussia the key-
stone of its policy, its vitality was destroyed when the Prussian
government scornfully refused its alliance, and the Prussian
people proved too weak to prevent, or even to check, the unsym-
pathising and separatist absolutism of their rulers. For a whole
year the national association had solemnly abjured the Prussian
supremacy, without having obtained any substitute except the
vague cry of Progress. Many of those who, under its banner,
had formed the majority in some of the lesser parliaments, aban-
doned its tainted name, and called themselves the party of Pro-
gress. But the abjuration of the Prussian fanaticism was a mere
hypocrisy. The party still intrigued to bring the parliaments
into collision with the governments, and to prevent any reform
that did not tend towards the annexation to Prussia. It la-
boured every where to introduce disorganisation and disorder.

376 The Schlesiuig-Hohteln Movement in Germany,

looking forward to the moment of a sudden change of system at
Berlin, and reckoning that Germany would then be the more
easily incorporated with Prussia the more completely its political
institutions were undermined. So far there was method in the
madness. But, as the disappointment lasted and success was de-
layed, the party of Progress fell more and more into the hands
of demagogues, without principles, or morality, or logic. Every
opportunity was seized to recall its services to the recollection of
the masses ; and this agitation for the sake of agitation it carried
on with a skill and perseverance hardly ever before exhibited by
a party which has retained its organisation without any distinct
ideas. But it lost more and more the respect of the masses;
and the signs of its decline became apparent as events marched
on without regard for its impotence. For months it had been,
eagerly seeking some definite national object, in order to sum-
mon its rank and file again round its deserted standard and its
isolated staff. Fate sent it the death of Frederick VII., the
common constitution of the 19th of November, and the Schles-
wig-Holstein pretender.

It cannot be said that when the crisis came the grossdeutsch
party was any better prepared. Its moderate and loyal members
were combined and organised in the reform associations ; but
the more democratic elements, which a popular movement must
chiefly rely on, held aloof. If the federal principle had not
recently suffered a heavy defeat by the failure of the scheme for
reform, the Schleswig-Holstein afl'air would no doubt have
tended to the triumph of grossdeutsch opinions among the peo-
ple. But, as matters actually stood, the sensible leaders of both
the national parties could not help seeing that the independent
popular agitation in favour of the Duchies would ignore them
and pass them by ; and they understood the danger it would
then be exposed to, of either degenerating into the vulgar instru-
ment of demagogues, or breaking up into divided and impotent
efforts, in either of which cases it would end in a ridiculous
failure. This danger increased as the members of either party
took the lead in the meetings and associations for Schleswig-
Holstein in the several towns and territories, — a course in which
the demagogues of the Nationalverein derived an advantage from
their experience in agitating. To the leaders of the opposite
party belongs the praise of having prepared a union between the
Nationalverein and the Reformverein, independent of all party
purposes, for the combined organisation and conduct of the popu-
lar movement in a legal and peaceable manner. The represen-
tatives of all the German parliaments and parties who met at
Nuremberg in November, and convoked a general meeting of
deputies at Frankfort for this purpose, evidently acted in the belief

The SMeswig-Holstein Movement in Germany, 377

that, since the whole nation was in principle united on this ques-
tion, an alliance between the great national parties was possible,
and would be able to exert a vigorous pressure on all those who
might resist. But when the Frankfort assembly met, on the 21st
of December, the state of affairs was completely changed. The
members of the Natio7ialverein who had signed the Nuremberg
compact, to set aside all party differences in order to cooperate
for the independence of Schleswig-Holstein under Frederick of
Augustenburg, had merely kept the name of their party out of
sight, and had meanwhile been actively employed in getting the
direction of the new associations exclusively into the hands of
their partisans, and in monopolising the collection of money. The
large sums over which they now obtained control, the careful
organisation they already enjoyed, and the universality of the
present movement, gave them an immense influence. They se-
cured a majority in the committee of the Frankfort assembly,
and constantly brought forward motions which distinctly aimed
at the establishment of a sort of national government by the
side of the regular state authorities. The grossdeutsch minority
were reviled as Danes in Germany, denounced to the suspi-
cions of the mob, and morally compelled to retire. In their ab-
sence the Central Committee of Thirty- Six was appointed. Its
members were chosen almost exclusively from among the leaders
of the Nationalverein ; and they would have exercised a terrorism
in Germany, as a committee of public safety, had it not been for
the invariable and instinctive distrust felt by the nation for the
party which sought by these intrigues to obtain the command
of the people.

The Germans desire no revolution ; and a revolution in the
name of Schleswig-Holstein would damage the good cause of the
Duchies, and ensure its ruin. The two great parties have been
dissolved by the progress of events ; and the combination under
which the national movement is continued will be determined
by the issue of the struggle with Denmark. A unanimous reso-
lution of the German people for the restoration of their unity
wiU be more easily attained than hitherto, when right and might
have been weighed in a single definite question. Many illusions
have been dispelled by the course of affairs; but the positive
determination to vindicate the rights of the Duchies is as deep
and as strong throughout the nation, without distinction of race
or creed or party, as on the first day of the agitation. The
Germans feel that their position as an active power will be only
recognised by Europe when it has been established by some po-
litical achievement which shall be the work of the whole nation.
They will follow that leader who will lead them to a national
war. They regard the policy of Austria and Prussia with sus-

378 The Schleswig-Holstein Movement in Germany.

piciou ; but the suspicion is not strong enough to dispense the
governments of the other states from answering to the call of
those two powers, if they should summon the nation to arms in
order that Schleswig-Holstein may not be once more left to the
tender mercies of Europe, Avithout regard to its national claims.
The insolence of Denmark has confirmed and fixed the determi-
nation of the Germans ; and the powers who are executing that
determination are for the time identical with Germany.

[ 379 ]

AGRICULTURE IN FRANCE.

The gi*eat warehouses by our docks, where one kind of merchan-
dise is ranged in interminable bales, are a fair symbol of English
agriculture; while that of France may be likened to the shops,
which exhibit every variety of commodity. The comparison
does not imply a preference for either system, but simply asserts
a fact which there is no need to explain when wc consider the
difference of climate in the two countries. It is no whim of the
farmer which covers Provence with olive-trees, the banks of the
Rhine or Gironde with vines, or the Scotch mountains with their
excellent beeves. Latitude decides the choice of crops, and thus
indirectly influences the methods of cultivation. For the processes
of cultivation are determined by the nature of the plants culti-
vated ; a truism which will be found to have more important
consequences than might be at first suspected. Thus, if one
kind of crop could only be cultivated by hand, while another
allowed the use of machinery, profound differences would in time
be produced between the populations which cultivated the re-
spective crops.

But, Avhatever are the effects of climate, man has a still more
powerful influence on agriculture, on its methods and its pro-
cesses. A French proverb says, Tant vaut Thomme, tant imut la
terre; but this seems to overlook the differences in the richness
of soil, or rather to claim every thing for man^s intelligence
and work. Part of his influence depends on the social or po-
litical organisation of a country. In one nation land is looked
upon as an instrument which loses its efficiency by being broken
up ; and the law favours the undivided inheritance of real pro-
perty. In another this use of land is hardly considered, in com-
parison with the political and social advantages of each subject
being a freeholder ; and the law orders the equal division of pro-
perty. We are pronouncing no opinion on this, but simply stating
the fact that in one place the law favours large properties, in
another small ones. And although it has been argued that the
size of properties need not determine the extent of farms, be-
cause a large property may be let out in several farms, or a single
farmer may rent a number of small properties, it is nevertheless
certain that in the majority of cases the extent of farms has a
close relation to the extent of properties.

We have, then, three principal agents which give agriculture
its characteristic differences — climate, man, and man's political
or social organisation. There are also secondary agents whose
influence must not be overlooked, such as the neighbourhood of

380 Agriculture in France.

a flourishing industrial population, offering a ready and certain
market for the products of the soil, setting the example of opera-
tions on a great scale^ and of the use of machinery, and providing
out of its profits capital to be invested in agriculture. Good
roads, peace, and security are other agents. It would be impos-
sible to trace with any exactness the distinct action of each prin-
cipal or secondary element. We see the combined effect of all
at once; and one combination of causes, natural and social, cli-
matic and political, gives to the agriculture of England the cha-
racter of a factory, while another gives to that of France the
character of a workshop. In the factory all the heavy work is
done by natural forces — water, fire, or steam. In the workshop,
though the aid of machinery is not discarded, the hand is the
principal instrument employed. One method is distinguished
by its extent, the other by its degree. These two divisions of
agriculture may be traced in all countries. The one ever relies
more or less on natural forces : the other is ever increasing the
employment of man. Yet, though there is a perfect agreement
in principles, there are many differences in the manner of their
application. In England the high cultivation increases labour
from the more careful breaking-up and cleansing of the soil; but
it turns chiefly on manures, for which it spares no expense. In
France the value of manures is by no means overlooked; but
high cultivation turns chiefly on the increase of manual hus-
bandry.

This is no arbitrary difference. The French farmers are not
so rich as the English, and are therefore less disposed to risk
theu' money in manures. They are for the most part small pro-
prietors, and cultivate their own freeholds by means of their
families and a few servants. Often they pay nothing for assist-
ance, but do all that is necessary in spare bits of time. It is the
relative abundance of hands in France that makes the varieties
of cultivation possible. In a workroom, each artisan may be
engaged in a different work, without any relation to that of his
neighbour ; in a factory, on the contrary, it is absolutely neces-
sary that all the occupations should converge to one end. Va-
riety of produce is out of the question, but in its place we have
quantity. In the same time, or rather on a given area, English
cultivation produces more than French ; and this is one ot the
prerogatives of a factory over a workroom. If France only pro-
duced corn, meat, and beer, like England, its inferiority Avould
be great ; it would stand below its neighbour both in the quan-
tity and in the quality of its produce. But France produces
also large quantities of flax and colza, wine and silk, French
plums, raisins, olives, almonds, figs, and oranges, enough to re-
establish the balance in its favour. Many of these products

Agriculture in France, 381

succeed better with the concentrated labour of small proprietors
than with the half-manufacturing processes of large farmers;
and as in a favourable climate a family can live on a small piece
of land, many French writers are in favour of small farms.
Others prefer large ones. Their differences spring from the
latter thinking that the state ought, before all things, to aim at
abundance of raw products ; while the former think that progress
consists in the fineness and quality of the produce. This result,
it is said, is got by small farming, while abundance is secured
by large farms. Though the actual quantities produced are
greater in small farming, the net produce is greater in large
farms. The majority of economists, hoAvever, are agreed that
both systems are equally useful, if they are adopted with due
regard to local and political circumstances. This theory, set
forth with great talent by M. H. Passy in his Systemes de Cul-
turey has silenced the disputes which used to be current about
the size of farms; and the partisans of the two systems have
united in the one effort of forwarding the progress of French
agriculture, which is far from having attained the perfection of
which it is capable.

It would be a mistake to suppose that these efforts are only
of to-day, or of 1815, the opening of the era of peace, or of 1789,
the epoch of so many changes. We will not go so far back as to
the time of Sully, who used to say that labourers and shepherds
were the two breasts of the state ; or that of Colbert, who also
patronised agriculture. We find that the French economists of
the physiocratic school were the real originators of agricultural
progress. During the second half of the eighteenth century they
had great influence on public opinion, especially on that of the
richer classes and the proprietors, whose expensive habits made
them desirous of getting all they could out of their estates. Now,
among Quesnay^s general maxims of economic government, the
third is, " that prince and people should never lose sight of the
fact that land is the one source of wealth, which agriculture is
the means of multiplying. For the increase of wealth procures
increase of population ; and capital and labour make agriculture
prosperous, extend commerce, encourage industry, and increase
and secure wealth. From this plenteous source springs the good
administration of all parts of the state." The ninth maxim adds,
*^ that a nation which has an extensive territory to cultivate, and
facilities for maintaining a great commerce in raw produce,
should not apply too much capital or too many hands to manu-
factures or trade, to the prejudice of the hands or capital em-
ployed in agriculture. For the first aim should be to have the
kingdom well peopled with rich cultivators.^^ Quesnay adds a
note, which we must also translate : " Of all methods of gaining

382 Agriculture in France.

money, there is none better, more profitable, more agreeable, more
natural, or more liberal, than agriculture/' Among his disciples
were Turgot, the Abbe Beaudau, Mercier de la Riviere, Dupont
de Nemours, the INIarquis de Mirabeau, Condorcet, and many
other celebrities of the time just preceding the Revolution. Great
improvements were introduced into France through their influ-
ence : the internal custom-houses were abolished, and the corn-
trade became free throughout the kingdom ; a foundation was
laid for freedom of manufactures ; commercial treaties were
made ; and the breeding of merino sheep and some other agri-
cultural improvements were encouraged. But far beyond these
results was the influence of the opinions formed by the physio-
crats— opinions in which there was much to disapprove, but
which aided greatly in destroying prejudices unfavourable to
agriculture.

Yet perhaps the physiocrats would not have advanced mat-
ters much, had it not been for the Revolution of 1789. We
are not here concerned with the political side of the Revolu-
tion, but only with its manifold influence on agriculture. Of
all the forces it brought to bear on this matter, the chief was
the rude shock it gave men^s minds, to awaken them from
their slumbers. The reproach of the continental farmer, as of
the French peasant, is his invincible spirit of routine. For a long
time he never read, never knew how to read ; he only tried to
get out of his ground bare necessaries ; and his land, treated
stingily and without knowledge, made a stingy answer to his
prayer. In the northern provinces it lay fallow one in every
three years ; in the south it w as only sown every other year.
And whence could the peasant get the idea of progress ? The
pamphlets of the physiocrats could never touch him, even if he
had been able to read them ; they were not addressed to him ;
and before they had time to create a public opinion strong enough
to influence him, the tempest came which swept away the upper
classes, and transfeiTed the greater part of the land to more
greedy and also more industrious hands.

Most people own that it was an act of robbery to deprive the
Church and nobles of their lands; but almost every body admits
that this robbery was a benefit to agriculture. Still, a few timid
doubts may be expressed on this head. It is quite true that a
large number of properties have been more profitable to the new
than to the old owner; but this advantage has had many draw-
backs. First, in many cases the purchaser of one of these biens
nationaux, as the confiscated estates were called, was ill at ease
in his conscience, and suspected the morality of the transaction.
The consequence was that he did not feel quite secure of his
title. A counter revolution might come and overthrow it. For

Agriculture in France. S%Z

this reason nobody would pay good coin for these stolen man-
sions and forests, fields and meadows. However the king was
cursed as a tyrant, his effigy in gold or silver was cherished and
hoarded ; but the assignats, the paper money which was decreas-
ing in value every day till it came to be worth nothing, were
readily paid away for doubtful rights over real property.

We say '^ rights over real property ;^^ for it is certain that for
several years the purchasers made scarcely any use of their new
acquisitions. They never dreamed of improvements, nor had they
the capital to make them. Most of the purchasers were entirely
without agricultural knowledge ; and the example of England was
of no use to those who were about to wage so long and terrible a
war with her — a war which also prevented the introduction of
improved breeds of cattle. The peace of 1815, and the much-
abused milliard which the Restoration gave as compensation to
the emigres, at last gave complete security to the contested titles ;
and from 1825, it is said, the change of ownership began to ex-
hibit its full benefits. This we may grant, and yet doubt whether
the nobles, if they had kept their estates, would have been more
slow to move. Without citing the examples of other countries,
let us ask, whose names do we generally see figuring in the prize-
lists of the French cattle -sho ws ? The Comte de Falloux, the
Marquis de Torcy, the Marquis de Vogue, the Comte de Tracy,
the Marquis de Dampierre, M. de Behagne, and a number of
other men of rank. Can we suppose that the gentlemen of the
old regime, influenced by public opinion, incited by example, and
stimulated hy want of money, would have been any slower to
understand their own interests? No prejudice stood in their
way ; it was shameful to trade, but it was not derogatory to a
nobleman to improve the income of his property.

There is another point that should be mentioned. It is usu-
ally supposed that the subdivision of French properties was a
fruit of the Revolution. But we have only to read contemporary
writers like Arthur Young or Necker, or to run through the list
of indemnities granted to the emigres, in order to see the false-
hood or the exaggeration of this view. Before 1789 the number
of small proprietors Avas very great. It is true that this number
has increased through several causes, one of which is the law^ on

' In the correspondence of Napoleon I. -with his brother Joseph, then king
of Naples, we read: "Establish the French civil code at Naples ; and all that
does not attach itself to you will be destroyed in a few years, while what you
want to keep will be consolidated (by the majorats or entails). This is the great

advantage of the civil code You must establish it in your kingdom ; it will

" consolidate your power, because it undermines every property but the entails,
and no great houses will remain but those which you set up as fiefs. This
is what made me preach, and induced me to establish, a civil code" (xii. 432).
The equal division of lands was previously in use for lands not belonging to the
nobles ; and the Emperor only utilised an established custom. His plan was to

384 Agriculture in France,

the equal division of inheritances. This law causes a division of
farms, but not to so great an extent as is supposed. The inheritors
often prefer to sell the property, either by private contract or by
auction, to one of their number, who pays their proportion of the
value to the rest.^' Speculation is another cause; a company,
nicknamed by its enemies the bande noire, bought large properties,
and sold them in lots at a great profit. But we need not balance
the good and evil done by this company, when we think how very
small was its influence — so small that we only mention it because
it made a great noise in the times of the Kestoration.

It is more important to look at the question from a point of
view which we do not remember to have seen mentioned. Writers
have balanced large against small properties in relation to their
productiveness, their political significance, and their bearings on
agi'icultural progress, and have given their judgment in accordance
with their views on these subjects; but they do not seem to have
taken notice of the want of capital at the time of the Revolution.
Now, however we may prefer large farms to small, it is clear
that it is better to cultivate a small farm with a sufficient capital
than a large one without it. As France was then situated, the
division of property was in conformity with the smallness of
capital.

The result of the Revolution most useful to the farmer is the
equitable adjustment of taxation. The taxes are not less; but
they are now levied legally and fairly. Many obstacles to pro-
gress have also been swept away by the abolition of the rights of
mills and ovens, and of several other absurd customs. The night
of the 4th of August 1789 was an important epoch for French
agriculture. A few days after — on the 11th — the decrees voted
on that night were published in form. The first article entirely
destroyed the feudal system. The personal feudal rights — those
which estabhsh serfage, or confer honourable privileges — were
abolished without compensation ; the profitable rights were to be
purchased at a price fixed by the National Assembly. Articles 2
and 3 abolished the exclusive right of dove-cotes, the rights of
chase and free warren. Article 4 abolished the manorial courts
of justice. Article 5 abolished all tithes in the hands of secular
or regular corporations, and promised to provide in some other
way for the expenses of worship, and for alms to the poor. All
other tithes were made redeemable. Article 6 made all other

strengthen his throne by surrounding it with a hundred possessors of majorats.
It is surprising that so profound a genius should have thought of building his ^
dynasty on so weak a foundation so few years after Lewis XVI., the sacred '
majesty and inviolable king, liad found thousands of them unable to secure him
from the scaffold.

- A farm is rarely divided so as to break up a business; generally it is only
the outlying plots of land that are divided.

jigricuUure in France. o85

perpetual rent-charges, whether in kind or money, redeemable.
Article 7 abolished the purchase of magistracies and municipal
offices. Article 8 suppressed the fees of country parsons, on
condition that the increase of their portion congrue, or minimum
revenue of 20/., was increased. Article 9 abolished all exemptions
from taxation, and declared that the assessment should extend to
all citizens and to all kinds of property, and be similar for all.
Article 10 abolished the privileges of provinces, districts, and
boroughs. Article 11 opened the admission to public offices to
all citizens, without distinction of birth. Of course all these
articles did not equally affect the progress of agriculture ; but we
mention them all to show the nature of the change which the
year 1789 must have produced on the popular mind.

Agriculture perhaps was more directly interested^ in the law
of the 28th of September 1791, sur les Mens et usages rurauoc.
Its first article runs as follows: "The territory of France,
throughout its whole extent, is free as the persons that inhabit
it; therefore no landed property can be subject to any other
usages than those established or recognised by the law, nor to any
other sacrifices than those which public utility may require, upon
the awarding of a just indemnity." The second article adds :
'^ The proprietors are free to vary their crops as they please, and
to dispose of all products of their lands within or without the
frontiers of France, without prejudice to the rights of others, and
in conformity with the laws." We will not quote the other en-
actments of the " Rural Code," although such articles as those
which allow every proprietor to enclose his estate, those on com-
mon rights and the passage of flocks, those on the utilisation of
rivers, and the like, are not without importance. In judging of
the efifects of the Revolution, it should not be forgotten that
France was a country where it was necessary to make a law to
authorise the cultivator to change his crops as he pleased.

From this time the coast was clear for the development of
French agriculture. What use did it make of the facilities it
had gained ? Did it seize them with all the ardour of the na-
tional character — with that furia francese which other nations so
often sneer at and envy ? Not so. Its ardour carried it to other

' The following is the opinion of M. Lconce de Lavergne on the tithes
{Economic rurale, p. 8) : " The suppression of the tithes was really a much less
important measure than people think. The burden has been shifted, not
abolished; for the expenses of public worship are now nearly 50,000,00 Of.,
although the promise of 1789, to raise all the country jjarsons' incomes to 1200f.,
has not been fulfilled. The clergy have lost on the whole about 20,000, OOOf.
a year ; but I do not believe the tithe-payers have gained this amount. It would
not be difficult to show in our present budget 20,000,000f. less profitably spent
than the old tithes. On the other hand, the rent of the land has been generally
increased by the amount of the tithes, and the farmers who are not also pro-
prietors have gained nothing."

386 Agriculture in France,

fields, which it fertilised Avith its blood, if not with its labour.
The wars which desolated Europe during the Republic and the
Empire took the labourers from the fields ; and the traveller in
1810, or 1812, or even later, might have seen in Alsace, or
Flanders, or Normandy, many a wagon driven by women, and
of the other sex nothing but old men and invalided soldiers.
This w'as not the season for agriculture to advance. Still the
imperial times were not quite destitute of progress. Great at-
tention was given to the maintenance and improvement of
the main roads — the cross roads came afterwards — and to the
construction of bridges and canals. A law was made for the
drainage of marshes ; and the continental blockade gave birth to
the beetroot-sugar trade, — a proof that there is no wind so ill
as not to blow good to somebody.

We do not mean that this was all that the imperial govern-
ment did for agriculture. If we may believe an Englishman
who travelled through France after 1815, the progress made since
the time of Arthur Young was surprising. " We no longer see,'*
says he, " the peasants covered with rags, and so miserable that
they are only objects of pity. Now they seem well fed and
well to do.^^ Of course there was progress ; it is a natural ten-
dency of mankind. And those great wars, though they cost
much blood, yet carried the French peasants through all the
countries of Europe, and showed them how other nations tilled
their lands. In their tedious winter- quarters, in their lengthened
garrison duties, idleness came to be, for a wonder, the mother of
learning ; and many a mind was struck by the processes wit-
nessed in foreign countries. So the crusades, though they could
not preserve Jerusalem to Christendom, had veiy important indi-
rect effects. But we do not thank people for benefits which they
did not intend j and governments especially must not take credit
for improvements to which they have not directed their efforts.

In England we should be loth to admit that the interference
of government could benefit agriculture. It must be left to pri-
vate adventurers ; or if it wants any patrons, any persons to watch
over its progress, our gentry are fuUy equal to the work. But
it is not so in France. Frenchmen are as willing to make sacri-
fices as we are ; but the two countries differ in the thing they
give. Frenchmen are prodigal of their blood, but sparing of
their money. We are prodigal of our money, but parsimonious
of our blood. Improvements are expensive. In France only
the government will bear their cost. People know that the
government has no means except those which it extracts from
the pockets of the tax-payers ; but no matter. Any thing whicli
bears V attache of the government, which is countersigned by its
functionaries, or carries evidence of its presence, is thought more

Agriculture in France, 387

of by many Frenchmen than any thing that depends on private
enterprise. It has even been argued that '^ agriculture can only
flourish when it is the object of anxious and constant supervision
by the government/' We have a better opinion of French agri-
culture. AYe consider it perfectly able to walk without leading-
strings. It is of age. But still, as there exists in France a
complete administrative organisation for the promotion of rural
economy, we must give a general account of it as it exists at
present, without troubling ourselves to give the exact dates of
all its developments.

The ministry of agriculture, commerce, and public works is
the organ of the government for this purpose. One of its de-
partments oversees the whole province of rural economy, with
the aid of a staff of " general inspectors.^' As each farmer may
farm as he pleases, the ministry can give no orders. Its only
means of persuasion is by its teaching, by encouragements_, by
the institutions it founds, and by the laws which it recommends.

As to its teaching, the first attempts at agricultural instruc-
tion were made by private persons in France as w-ell as in Eng-
land, and even in Germany. Matthieu de Dombasle, the founder
of Roville, near Nancy, was the beginner of French agronomic in-
stitutes. Roville disappeared from the agricultural firmament after
its founder's death, but the Annals of Roville perpetuate its me-
mory. Its successors have been Grignon, near Versailles, founded
in 1827 by M. Bella, whose son is still at its head; Granjonan,
in the environs of Nantes, founded in 1832 by M. Biefiel ; and
Le Saulsaie, in the department of the Ain, not very far from the
Swiss frontier, founded in 1840 by M. Niviere. These three in-
stitutions still exist. In 1848 they passed into the hands of the
government as " district schools of agriculture,'^ and now figure
in the budget as " imperial schools of agriculture." The change
of name is not without significance, and may be easily explained.
When private agricultural institutions were seen to flourish in
France, pressure was put on the government to make them take
up the business. Perhaps the government of July would have
yielded. In those days it was the fashion to say that France was
an essentially agricultural country. It was the boast of orators
who did not know how much better it is for a country to be at
once agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing. Now in a
country essentially agricultural, it was an essential function of
the state to teach agriculture. After the Bevolution of 1848 the
new government, it is said, found the plans drawn up. The late
M. Thouret, a distinguished agronomist, to whom the chances
of politics gave the portfolio of agriculture, had the pleasure of
organising a whole system of agricultural instruction. An agro-
nomic institute was founded at Yersailles for the scientific studies ;

VOL. IV. d d

388 Jgriculture in France,

the three existing institutions were adopted; it was proposed
to found seven or eight more in different districts of France, for
middle, or, as the French say, secondary instruction ; and there
were to be school-farms'* for inferior, or primary instruction.
Of these there was to be one for each of the 86 departments, —
or even for each of the 363 arrondissements. But when a law
begins its existence on paper, it does not always penetrate into
the region of facts. Sometimes the people will not have it;
sometimes circumstances prevent it ; sometimes the two obstacles
combine. In the present case the organisers of 1848 wanted to
go too fast. The pace soon slackened; and now there is no
movement at all, at least in this direction. The agronomic in-
stitute of Versailles, under the presidency of M. de Gasparin,
and with a constellation of brilliant professors, nominated after a
competitive examination, had rapidly made itself a great name.
Why the imperial government suppressed it, has never been told
to the world ; but the consequence of this event is that the
secondary institutions have become imperial instead of district
schools. At the same time the 49 school-farms passed from the
third into the second rank ; and now there is a talk of establish-
ing a new third rank by introducing agricultural instruction into
the primary schools. It would thus be brought home to all the
population. Trials have been made, but on no connected plan.
The principle is still a V etude. Besides this symmetrically organ-
ised instruction J there are professors of agriculture at Rodez, Be-
san9on, Quimper, Bordeaux, Beauvais, Toulouse^ Nantes, Rouen,
and Amiens, who sometimes also go on lecturing tours. There
are also three veterinary schools supported by the state, at Alfort
near Paris, Lyons, and Toulouse.

Without entering into the question whether agricultural
instruction is best given by the state or by private enterprise,
we may submit that, if the state meddles with the business, it
should do it thoroughly. And how can the system be perfect
without its head — without the high school which " crowned the
edifice''? It was from this establishment that the most im-
portant progress radiated. It was there that inveterate pre-
judices were most efficaciously combated ; for it was there that
the richest, the most intelligent, the most progressive cultivators
— the model farmers, whose practice enlightened whole neigh-
bourhoods and reversed their routine — received their education.
The need seems so great, that we should think an institution of
the kind would be supported, even in France, without any assist-
ance from the government.

Many people entertain the same opinion of some other estab-

* These farms are private establishments, the proprietors of which receive a
salary from the state. The pupils are few, and have to perform manual labour.

Agriculture in France, 389

lishmeiits, whicli belong to the list of means of " encourage-
ment" employed by the government ; such as the dairy and
sheep farms^ and the breeding-studs. The imperial dairy and
sheep farms^ are situated at Moneavril, GevroUes^ Haut Tingray_,
Le Pin, St. Angeau, Alfort, Mably, Le Camp, and Trevoux. These
are the most important farms; and, with the addition of those
of Rambouillet and Vincennes, are the nurseries whence every
year come the bulls and rams destined to improve the breeds
of cattle. Several of the rams have been sold for high prices,
a^d some have been taken to the Baltic provinces. At such
prices private enterprise would make a profit. The introduction
of sheep of fine fleece dates from the last century,^ and the in-
tervention of the government was no doubt useful at first. Soon
after the introduction of the merinos, attention was awakened to
the remarkable qualities of English breeds, and Gilbert was sent
over to report upon them ; but there is no trace of their intro-
duction into France at that time. Wollaston, in 1819, was the
first to import the Ditchley or New Leicesters ; M. de Morte-
mart followed in 1825 ; and the government only took up the
matter in 1831. In 1836 the Southdowns, and in 1837 the New
Kents, were imported to improve the French breeds. The Dur-
ham cattle were introduced in 1823 by Briere d'Azy.

The English thorough-bred horses have been known in
France since the seventeenth century; but nothing practical
came of it till 1754, when, for a bet, one traversed the forty
miles between Fontainebleau and Paris in 108 minutes. But the
royal breeding-studs contained not only English stallions, but
some from all countries famous for their horses. The Republic
suppressed these studs in 1 793 ; Napoleon reestablished them in
1806; and from that time they have been kept up or reorganised,
according as the government simply desired to encourage or was
ambitious to transform. At the present time the order of the
day is encouragement, by letting out good staUions, by giving
prizes for grooming and the like, by different recompenses, and
especially by the purchase of horses for the army, and even
sometimes for the Emperor's stables. Sometimes the govern-
ment adds good advice, as may be seen from a passage out of a
report of the director of the studs : " Breeders must now see
that, in exchange for the encouragements of all kinds given
them not only by the state, but by the departments and the
towns, they must try to justify the sacrifices and the care be-

5 The state bears the expenses only of the sheep-farms of GdvroUes and
Haut Tingi-ay, and of the dairy-farms of Corbon and St. Angeau. The others
are chargeable to the Emperor's civil list.

8 It was through the Due Ch. de Trudaine, intendant of finances, and Dau-
benton, that merino sheep were introduced into France, in 1766.

390 Agriculture in France.

stowed on them. If they wish to put into their own pockets the
miUions which horse-fanciers spend in foreign parts, they must
henceforth set themselves to give their produce such qualities as
every consumer has a right to demand. When this truth is
acknowledged, when the breeders have really entered on the
way of progress, the national production will take its eagle-flight,
and the horse-breeding trade (Vindustrie chevaline — we are at
a loss for plain English to translate the eloquence of this bril-
liant Houyhnhnm) will be set on its true basis ; then with more
self-confidence, and with intelligence to judge of its own in-
terests, it will perhaps be foremost to demand its initiative as
ardently as erst it demanded the protection of the state." What
would be the feelings of a respectable English farmer thus offi-
cially instructed and dictated to by the first clerk of the cattle-
market ?

Another means of administrative encouragement connected
with the studs is horse-racing. The first race took place in the
Plaine des Sablons in 1776. Now there are more than 60 hip-
podromes, where there are several races in the year, besides be-
tween 80 and 100 courses for steeple-chases and trotting-courses
for hacks. Nearly 400 prizes are distributed every year.

But the agricultural shows, where cattle, implements, and
produce are exhibited, are of more importance than the races.
There are two series of cattle-shows. The first comprises ani-
mals for the shambles, beginning with the Poissy show in 1844
— where the most important exhibitions all take place. There
are also annual shows at Lyons, Bordeaux, Lille, Nimes, and
Nantes. The second series is for breeding animals, beginning
with the exposition at Versailles in 1 850, where 63 cattle, 63
sheep, 10 swine, 155 implements, and 90 lots of produce, were
exposed. In 1851 there were four exhibitions in different parts
of France; in 1852-1857, eight ; in 1859-1862, ten; and in 1863,
1864, twelve. In 1863 the numbers of cattle, implements, and
lots of produce were reckoned by thousands. The utility of
these shows is undeniable. They are a strong stimulant to some,
and an excellent school for others. Moreover these official ex-
hibitions are not the only ones. There are numbers of others,
less extensive, but as efficacious, organised by agricultural asso-
ciations and committees. There are also ploughing -matches
and the like, the eflFect of which may be imagined from a fact
reported in the newspapers a few months ago. A ])old and
hardworking peasant presented himself at a match with his rude
ancestral plough; but he was so soon distanced by the improved
implements, that he solemnly broke up his old machine and
bought a new one. It is thus that progress makes its way, by
gradually breaking up routine and prejudice.

Jgriculture in France. 391

These private associations and committees, the number of
which amounts to 741, are of incalculable use. They include
among their members a large number of small farmers and
peasants, who meet at stated intervals to hear a paper read on
some question of agriculture, who organise various competitive
exhibitions, and who give prizes for all kinds of progress, either
out of their private contributions or out of money which the
government awards to them. Among these prizes is the whole
class of pi'imes d/honneur which the government instituted in
1856, and has since developed. The ministerial circular thus
explains the motives and considerations on which the step was
taken : ^^Thc competitive exhibition brings out and awards prizes
to those specimens of each race which display the best conforma-
tion and the most desirable qualities : but the award of the jury
is not current beyond the area of the exhibitors. It is based
solely on the animal exhibited, without consideration for the con-
ditions under which it has been bred, for the system of which it
is an expression, for the money which has been expended on it,
for the loss or gain which the production of it will bring to the
breeder or fatter.^'

The same is true of the agricultural productions. "The
economical question, then, is necessarily kept almost out of
sight by the juries, when, for instance, they award the prize to
the best bull, and point it out to breeders as an example of
desirable qualities, without any consideration of the cost of its
production. Considered simply as institutions for determining
and awarding prizes to absolute perfection, we may say that the
competitive exhibitions have fully attained their object, and ful-
filled the expectations which the administration had in creating
them. But another step may now be taken; and we may con-
sider whether a development of the institution, enabling it to em-
brace a sphere hitherto beyond its action, would be both useful
and easy to accomplish."

The administration thereupon founded a special prize of
oOOOf., and a silver cup valued at 3000f., for the agriculturist
whose farming was best, and who had brought into operation
the most useful improvements. As there are twelve district ex-
hibitions every year, there are twelve of these primes d^honneur,
"The competition," says the circular of 1856, "is only really
and seriously open to proprietors or large farmers, whose culti-
vation is both scientific and perfectly adapted to the circum-
stances of their locality, economical in cost, and productive in
results. The jury, in a word, has not to award a prize for en-
couragement, but to recompense a net result, incontestable in its
reality, and capable of being appealed to as a model example to
show how economy in expenditure, order in labour, perfection in

392 Agriculture in France,

system, the happy alliance of science and practice, and, finally, a
proper subordination of system to invincible circumstances, create
present prosperity and secure a great future for rural industry."
This measure has resulted in giving prominence to many model
farms; and if the prizes did not make them well cultivated, they
at least brought them forward as examples for emulation.

The expenses of this administrative instruction and encour-
agement stand as follows in the estimates of the Minister of
Agriculture for 1864 :

Veterinary schools 643,300f.

Imperial schools of agriculture .... 530,600

School-farms, grants to 680,000

Dairy and sheep farms 199,100

Agricultural colonies 30,000

Professors of agriculture 18,300

Inspectors of agriculture 69,000

Encouragements — prizes for competition, \ , ^^^ ^^^w

grants to societies, and the like . . j ' '

Total chargeable to the ministerial budget 3,670,300
Add, expenses of breeding-studs . . . 1,860,000

General total . . 5,530,300

On the other side, we must extract from the same budget cer-
tain receipts derived from these establishments, which go towards
lessening the above expenditure :

Veterinary schools 390,850f.

Imperial schools of agriculture .... 258,500

National sheep-farms, exclusive of those 1 - « r^r^r.

dependent on the civil list .... J '

National dairy-farm 96,956

Studs 652,460

Total . . 1,450,766

After instruction and encouragement, legislation furnishes
the government with its most potent lever for forcing agricul-
tural progress. Here our field is large, and we might carry up
our history to remote times. But we will confine ourselves to
the most recent measures, without going back beyond the last
ten years.

The Credit Fonder must head the list, though the company
bearing that name was only constituted on the 28th of February
1852. But it would be as idle to make credit on real security
depend on that decree, as to make language the invention of the
first grammarian. Loans on real securities are almost as old as
real property itself; and France has had good experience of

Agriculture in France. 393

them, since she has accumulated a mass of mortgages estimated
at 5 milliards by some, and at 12 milliards by others.^ The
famous company does nothing but diminish in some measure
the rate of interest, and facilitate the paying-off of mortgages.
The 5 or 6 per cent annual payment includes a sinking fund,
which gradually extinguishes the debt ; and while the mortgager
pays his interest duly, the capital remains inconvertibly in his
hands, and his mortgage cannot be foreclosed. This was cer-
tainly an improvement on the old method of borrowing on mort-
gage ; but it did not do much for agriculture. The greater part
of the loans was granted to proprietors of houses in towns, and
only small sums found their way into farms. Now, since the
legislative favour shown to this society regarded solely its utility
to agriculture, the object does not seem to be attained. The
society itself feels this ; and it has on the one hand petitioned for
powers which do not find a place in the original plan, and on the
other it has founded a compagnie du credit agricole.

And here let us stop for a moment in our course over what
we may call the organisation of French agriculture, to take
breath, and make some general observations. We all know the
great reproach made against France, of her tendency to centrali-
sation. Those who defend this tendency against its vigorous
opponents, trust most to the argument derived from national
unity which, they say, is due to centralisation. It might be
replied, that as this desirable unity was attained it would be
proper to decentralise, so as to restore the equilibrium between
the centre and extremities. It might be added that England
was never centralised, and yet that national unity is as perfect
there as in France. There is no greater diflference between
the Englishman and Scot than between the Picardian and Pro-
ven9al; and more Bretons, Basques, Alsatians, and Flemish^
imable to speak French, may be found, than Irish unable to
speak English ; and yet in France there were never such causes
of hate as divided the English and Irish. Unity, then, has no-
thing to do with the question. And if, by hypothesis, adminis-
trative centralisation were still necessary to consolidate political
unity, why need this conduct us to the Procrustean bed of eco-
nomical centralisation? Is not agriculture essentially decen-
tralised? Are not north and south, east and west, subject to
difierent influences of soil and climate? Why, then, subject
them to precisely the same conditions of labour, credit, produc-
tion, and exchange ? Why, of all things, take from those who can

' The Minister of Finance has calculated that the mortgage indebtedness
amounts nominally to about 12 milliards ; but there is a great number of merely-
formal entries, which do not constitute a real mortgage. The amount to be thus
deducted is not known, but is generally estimated at about 7 millions. „

394 JgricuUure in France,

make the best use of it, that institution which was meant especi-
ally to aid them in their enterprises, the credit fonder ? What
has been the consequence ? This single establishment, produced
by the fusion of several similar ones, and centralised at Paris,
after languishing through ten years of progress (which, according
to the 31onitetir, filled the directors with joy), had come in 1862
to do business to the amount of 120 millions of francs, 33 mil-
lions of which were lent to communes, and 86 or 87 millions
only on mortgage. Of these 87 millions, only 27 were lent to
560 inhabitants of departments ; so that GO millions were left
for Paris ! In old times, when a bank for real secm'ities was
as yet reckoned among the pia desideria^ its establishment was
asked for in the name of agriculture. Afterwards, when facts
had spoken, a special establishment was said to be wanted for
this x)urpose, and the credit agricole was founded. And where ?
Why, in the centre, at Paris, where there is no agriculture. And
so this establishment also is obliged to make a liberal interpre-
tation of the word agricole^ to lend upon the security of grain,
and to extend its business to such accessory matters as beetroot-
sugar manufactories, distilleries, flour-mills, and the like. Let
us hope that time and experience will lead to an organisation
which will bring the one who does the service into local contact
with those who require it.

With excessive centralisation excessive regulation is closely
connected. The exaggerated stringency of the law of July 17,
1856, is the cause why so few proprietors have applied for any
part of the 100 millions then offered to them. Up to the pre-
sent time the sum lent is quite insignificant, in spite of the
twenty-five years allowed for gradual reimbursement. In six
years thirty-nine proprietors have obtained loans to the amount
of 720,750f , applicable to the drainage of 3279 hectares. But
144,216 hectares had been drained up to the 1st of January 1863.
If, however, the loan is not much sought after, the gratuitous as-
sistance of the imperial engineers is thankfully accepted. Some
30,000 hectares have been drained under their superintendence.
There is still much to be done in this way. There is plenty of
marsh-land.

Let us omit all measures of secondary importance, and come
ut once to the famous letter of January 5, 1860, written by the
Emperor to his minister of state. His passion for astonishing
the world by unexpected acts is well known. It will be lucky if
the new Jove always launches his bolts through a sky as cloud-
less, against as real abuses and obstacles to progress. This time
it was prohibitions that were struck ; commerce and manufac-
tures shared with agriculture the benefits granted or promised.
" With regard to agriculture,^' said the letter, '' it must have its

Jgriculture m France. 393

share in the banks for credit. To bring low woodlands under
the plough, and to restore the woods on the high-lands ; to set
apart a large yearly sum for great works of drainage, irrigation,
and reclamation of lands, — these works, by changing barren
into well-tilled communes, will enrich the communes without
impoverishing the state, which will recover its advances by the

sale of part of the reclaimed land One of the greatest

services that can be done to the country is to facilitate the trans-
port of matters of prime necessity for agriculture and manu-
facture/' This letter was a kind of preface to the treaty of
commerce of January 23, 18G0, and to the law of June 15, 1861,
suppressing the sliding- scale, and substituting a fixed duty of
50 centimes to the 100 kilogrammes for corn, as well as to the im-
provements set forth in the Mordteur of January 21, and Febru-
ary 3, 1860, and November 13, 1863. We will not tire the reader
with a list of the projected improvements ; w^e will confine our-
selves to saying that, for means of communication, France now
possesses 16,988 kilometres of railway, 37,352 of high-road,
561,843 of branch-roads, 1 1,250 of navigable rivers and canals,
11,250 of which are actually traversed by boats.

It would be curious if we could distinguish, in the progress
of French agriculture, the improvements due to government, and
those due to private enterprise. But it would be impossible.
The part taken by the administration is plain enough; for it
works solemnly, in the mass, and publishes accounts of its ex-
penses. Private enterprise, on the contrary, generally avoids all
show, because all that glitters, though not gold, costs gold, and
works in detail. But a thousand individuals, each producing
10<r, produce more than one individual producing 1000<^^ This
reflection leads us to suppose that, even in France, where the
administration does so much, private enterprise does even more.^
The existence of a proverb like aide-toi, le del faidera, ought to
make us believe that enterprising men are not so rare in France
as is generally supposed.

But, in any case, it is certain that there has been much pro-
gress since the beginning of the century, which statistics will
enable us to measure, though not without difficulty. Accu-
rate returns are almost wanting for one of the two epochs which
■\ve are about to compare. We cannot rely on Arthur Young's

^ For this opinion we need scarcely quote the authority of M. CI. Anth.
Costaz, of the Office of Agriculture and Commerce, who, in his History of the
Administration {ISS2, t. i. 220, note), says, "The French administration has been
too neglectful of the suggestions of enlightened private persons. If it had aided
in the execution of projects which a true love of the public welfare had in-
spired, our agriculture, in several of its branches, would have developed to a
degree that it has not yet reached." It is to be hoped that it has mended in
this respect, and no longer despises private suggestions out of love for the
public.

396 Agriculture in France.

estimates, anymore tlian on Vauban's. It is not safe to judge
a great country by the aspect of a few square leagues. Neither
can we rely on the illustrious Lavoisier, though he was deputy
and commissioner of the treasury, having previously been farmer-
general, a distinguished agricultural economist, and one who
had studied political arithmetic all his life. He gives us only
an estimate founded on an incomplete inventory. Chaptal,
minister of Napoleon I., made a similar calculation, but on dif-
ferent data ; and if we would compare the 2/750,000,000f. given
by Lavoisier, in 1789, in his Richesse territoriale du Royaume de
France, with the 4,678,000,000f. given by Chaptal for 1812, in
his book De V Industrie franc.aise, we should first have to make
important rectifications. Jb^or instance, Lavoisier excludes from his
total both the value of the seed, which Chaptal gives at 381 mil-
lions, and the consumption of animals attached to the farm, which
Chaptal estimates at 863 millions. Next, if we desire to obtain
the value of the actual products of agriculture, in spite of the
great statistical works that have been going on for more than
twenty years — with a success which some people question — it is
still difficult to establish a satisfactory result. As a proof, we
will copy from Dr. Maurice Block's Charges de V Agriculture
dans les divers Pays de V Europe (1851) some of the estimates
based on the official statistics of 1840 :

millions

Ofiicial estimate (very incomplete) . . 4527

Estimate of Dr. Royer (with additions) . 6641

„ „ with labourers' wages 7598

„ of M. Moreau de Tonnes . . 6022

„ ofDr. Maurice Block . . . 7420

In 1852-53 a new official estimate was made, which gave for
vegetable produce 5637 millions, and for animals 2716. The
official document contents itself with adding these two sums,
and making a total of 8353 millions, without thinking of sub-
tracting at least 686 millions for forage, and of other similar
drawbacks which probably would be found. The actual total
then would be at most 7667 millions. But this total does not
include the value of brandy, 64 millions (too small a sum, since
the brandy exported in 1863 amounted to 67 millions; the actual
value of this product is at least 150 millions), beer 63 millions,
cider 47 millions, oil 160 millions, and raw silk 66 millions.

The result of estimates of this kind depends on a mass of
details, slight differences in which will affect the general totals.
For instance, if one statistician took for his unit the price of
corn at the barn, and another the price of corn in the market-
place, their totals might differ by 50 per cent or more. Again,
a statistician, wishing to show the constant progress of French

1789.

1815.

1859.

. 12f.

18f.

30f.

. 5

6

10

. 1

2

5

. 7

4

5

. 25

30

50

Total 50

60

100

Agriculture in France, 397

agriculture, begins with Vauban, and goes on to Lavoisier and
Chaptal, basing bis continually increasing numbers on tlie au-
thority of great names. Now Vauban, taking for his unit the
prices of his own day, gives l,301,804,000f. as the value of agri-
cultural products. But to cojiipare actual quantities it is clear
that we must use the same unit ; and if we multiply by the dif-
ference between the old and the new price of corn, we shall find
that Vauban's sum represents a produce of 6,295,3 19,000f. !

With all these difficulties in our way, we can only give, with
great diffidence, the following comparison, drawn up by the emi-
nent economist and practical agriculturist M.Leonce de Lavergne^
who gives the following division of the gross produce of a hectare,
or two acres and a half, of land at three different epochs :

Landlord's rent
Farmer's profit
Miscellaneous expenses
Land-tax and tithe
Wages

These figures all seem to us too small, though the proportion
between the items seems pretty exact. Perhaps the farmer's
profit is put rather too low ; but in this particular there are great
variations between farm and farm, and district and district. As
we find it impossible to estimate the great totals of produce with
any more certainty than the celebrated men to whom we have
referred, we will confine ourselves to particular tests, which can
be based on exact data.

Amongst those in which we can feel most confidence is the
census of the population. Now that of 1 789, taken from the
registers of taxes, gave the number of inhabitants at 26,363,074.
The soil of France had to feed 26 millions of persons ; almost all
the corn they consumed was produced in the country. Odessa
was not in existence ; the United States were still occupied in
healing the wounds of the war of independence ; and the other
corn-producing countries were cut oft' from France by the im-
perfection of the means of transport. The country was left to
itself; and the consequence was thus put by Arthur Young :
^' I am so convinced, by my observations in all the provinces,
that the population of the kingdom is out of proportion with its
industry and its labour, that I firmly believe it would be stronger
and infinitely more prosperous with five million inhabitants less.
Through this excess it presents on all sides pictures of misery
absolutely incomparable with any degree of happiness it could

398 ^Agriculture in France,

ever have attained, even under the old government. A traveller,
without looking- so closely into things as I have done, Avill see
unequivocal signs of distress every step he takes/^ Since Arthur
Youug wrote thus, the population has risen to 37 millions, and
distress has certainly diminished. This fact alone authorises us
to say that agricultural produce has increased 50 per cent. The
increase of population refutes Arthur Young^s argument ; and
■we believe that a diminution of 5 million inhabitants, with the
bad social organisation of the day, would not have made any
change in the aspect of the country. In Vauban^s time there
were 5 million inhabitants less ; and yet any one who reads his
Dime rot/ale can see that the distress was portentous, and pro-
bably greater than about 1789.

The increase of population must have gone hand in hand
with an increase of land under cultivation, or an increase in
the production per acre, or perhaps both. The returns confirm
this conclusion. In 1815, 4,591,000 hectares were sown with
corn; in 1829, more than 5 millions; in 1852, 6 millions; and
now there are more than 6,700,000 hectares. Corn has gained
about half a million of hectares from rye, which now only takes
two millions of hectares instead of two and a half; but it has
made still greater inroads on the low woodlands, the downs, and
heaths. This is one explanation of the increase of population ;
but there is also another. According to official tables, the mean
produce of the hectare between 1815 and 1820 oscillates about
10 hectolitres; at present it varies from 16 to 17; and we sus-
pect that these figures are too small. The produce, then, has
more than doubled within the last forty or fifty years, and cer-
tainly the people are better fed. In good years there is even an
excess for exportation. We reckon that since 1819 the exports
in years of abundance have been about 24 or 25 millions of hec-
tolitres ; while in short years, which have been more frequent,
the imports have been from 58 to 59 millions. This great im-
portation seems to prove that the population has been in easy
circumstances enough to pay the high price of imported grain.

The productiveness per acre has increased partly by better
farming, deeper ploughing, a more rational rotation of crops, or
adaptation of them to the soil, and especially by the increase
of manure. We speak now like certain agricultural economists,
who look upon cattle only as so many producers of manure ; but
the increase of domesticated animals would be a benefit, even if
we put out of consideration the manure they produce. It is a
remarkable fact that cattle have multiplied in France faster than
men. Thus, the numbers of horses were, in 1812, 2,122,617 ; in
1840, 2,818,400; in 1850, 2,983,966. Horned cattle in 1812
were 6,681,952; in 1829, 9,130,652; in 1839, 9,936,538; in

Agriculture in France. ^1^

1852, 11,285,098. Sbeep in 1829 were 29,130,233; in 1839,
32,151,430 ; 1852, 33,510,531. Swine in 1839 were 4,910,721 ;
and in 1852, 5,082,141.- The progress is most remarkable in
horned cattle ; the increase is both absolute and relative. For
every 100 hectares, there were 13 such cattle in 1812, 17 in
1829, 19 in 1839, and 21 in 1852 ; for every 1000 inhabitants,
there were 229 such cattle in 1812, 280 in 1829, 290 in 1839,
and 314 in 1852. In sheep the numerical increase has been
less remarkable ; but a great number of flocks have been much
improved, and ordinary races replaced by good breeds. The
horned cattle have been also improved, and their mean weight
increased, partly by crossing, partly by improved feeding.

Thus we see that while the population has increased about
40 per cent, the production of grain has increased some 50 per
cent, and that of animals probably still more, if we take account
of their increased weight. But our picture of the progress of
agriculture is not yet finished, because a quantity of new crops
have been introduced. AVe will give two instances. The potato,
which the people were so slow to adopt from Parmentier, backed
by Lewis XVI., covered half a million hectares in 1815, and now
covers a million hectares of the surface of France, which seems
elastic enough to find room for all new crops. Our second instance
is beetroot for sugar, the produce of which amounted last year to
170,000,000 kilogrammes of sugar. It is clear, moreover, that
the sources of employment have multiplied ; for the wages of 95
centimes, which Arthur Young considered a high average for
France, have, in spite of the increase of population, reached an
average of If. 41c. according to the official tables, and If. 50c.
according to general opinion. And this rise of wages has taken
place in the teeth of a great number of improved implements
introduced into husbandry. The 203 scarifiers, extirpators, and
other implements with many teeth, counted up in 1852, are
recent innovations. The 58,444 threshing-machines moved by
horse-power, and the 1737 steam-machines which were going in
the same year, had all been introduced within the last fifteen
years. In 1862 the numbers were much larger. Steam-mowing
and reaping-machines, and the steam-plough, have been intro-
duced more recently ; and yet we hear the same complaints of
the insufficient number of labourers. Will this want be any
barrier to further progress ? We do not think so. Machinery
has by no means done all it can do ; there is many a benighted
farmer sliU left in France. If it be objected that the numberless
small proprietors can never purchase such expensive implements,
we may make two distinct replies. First, small proprietors of
this kind do not want these implements. They are not the
persons who complain of the want of hands ; they rather com-

400 Agriculture in France.

plain of the want of land. Secondly, there are already persons
in several districts of France, as in England, who do agricul-
tural work by contract, and carry their moveable engine and
their threshing-machine from village to village. The number of
these men may be increased; and their increase will be of special
service to proprietors of the second class, who, with those of the
first class, make the loudest lamentation over the emigration of
rural labourers into the towns.

This desertion of the country is no special characteristic of
France, neither is it confined to one epoch. It was talked of
even before 1789, though the existence of trading monopolies
and guilds, and the almost total absence of manufactories, made
it much more difficult to find employment in towns than it is
now. But nowhere were the complaints so loud as in France.
Arthur Young, who considered the towns to be too thinly scat-
tered and too small for the population of so large a country,
would have been much astonished at these complaints. He thought
that it was the net produce which enriched the cultivators, and
that this net produce was composed in part of what other people
gave them for their grain, their vegetables, their wine, their
fruit, and their meat. Agriculture, he said, — and most people
have said the same after him, — has need of consumers to make
it prosper. This axiom is elementary, evident, and uncontro-
verted by the opposite considerations which are brought against
it. It might, if necessary, be proved by statistics. The depart-
ments where agricultural production is most advanced are almost
always those where manufacturing industry is most developed.
Such are the departments of the Nord, the Lower Seine, the
Pas de Calais, the Seine and Oise, Seine and Marne, and so on.
Those where agriculture is poorest, such as the Lozere and the
Lot, are also the least industrial. It is unlucky that material
and moral prosperity do not seem to go hand in hand. One of
the great problems of the day is to find means to remedy this
misfortune.

This migration into the towns must not be confounded with
the migrations of labourers from one district to another for hay-
making, harvest, or vintage. A statistical enquiry into this
subject shows that 266,769 men and 98,328 women emigrate
periodically from poorer districts to look for work in richer ones,
while 529,509 men and 353,891 women immigrate into the
richer districts during the harvest and vintage. The immense
difierence between these figures may be explained partly by the
number of Belgian and other foreign labourers whose emigration
is not noted, and partly by the fact that the labourer Avho only
emigrates from one place immigrates successively into several.
With the multiplication of locomobile machinery the numbers

Agriculture in France, 461

of these nomad labourers will diminish, and they will be forced
to look for new employments, which they will probably have
little difficulty in finding.

We have not yet, however, exhausted our list of tests whereby
we can measure the progress of agriculture ; but, in order not
to multiply figures, we will only add one fact. In 1821 the
Minister of Finances had an estimate made of the selling value
of the land, houses, and buildings; and the total amounted to
39,514,000,000f. In 1851 another estimate was made; and the
result gave a total of 83,744,000,000f The value, therefore, had
more than doubled ; yet in 1851 the country had not recovered
from the panic of 1848. And we should not be going beyond
the mark to estimate the total for 1863 at 120 milliards. This
sum includes all real property in town or country. In 1851, out
of the 834 milliards, about QQ represented farm-property ; so
that, it is clear, the value of this kind of property had quite kept
pace with that of houses.

We consider that French agriculture has by no means reached
the perfection it is destined to attain to. Private enterprise is
taking every day a more important place in it. It is already on
the watch to note the progress made in other countries. It is
ready to adopt or to try any new processes which promise to
be improvements. By degrees we shall see the administration
beaten in the race by some enterprising and ardent agriculturists;
and after a time its business will be confined to noting and
acknowledging the progress made, and, if it still likes solemn
parade, to distributing its primes d'honneur.

[ 402 ]

THE BANK CHARTER ACT.

[COMMirMCATED,]

No measure, probably, has ever had so much good and evil said
of it, without any real understanding of its true character, as
the famous Bank Charter Act of 1844. It has been the inces-
sant subject of passionate comment for many years. Committees
of the Houses of Parliament have sat in judgment upon it; hosts
of witnesses, many of great commercial and intellectual emi-
nence, have recorded their opinions on its presumed effects;
ponderous Blue-books have thrown multitudes of questions and
answers upon the world; — and yet to this very hour scarcely
any two men are agreed as to its nature, its provisions, or its
working.

This fact is surpassingly strange, yet it has an easy explana-
tion. The Bank Act of 1844 was the child of theory, whilst, in
fact, its enactments are peculiarly practical, and are scarcely
tainted with any colour of theory. It has been loudly pro-
claimed in the name of theory, and as loudly assailed on grounds
of theory. Angry combatants have fought over it in defence of
conflicting views ; and the last thing they have thought of has
been to study and discover its true nature by what it enacts,
instead of by the doctrines which it was supposed to contain.
And thus it has happened that its real character has remained
obscured and buried under the weight of irrelevant controversy.

It is a very characteristic illustration of the sort of discussion
which has raged so long about this unhappy statute, that when
its reputed parent was asked at the opening of his examination
by the chairman of the committee of the House of Commons, in
1857, whether the enactments which he enumerated were not the
leading provisions of the Act, Lord Overstone, instead of giving
a direct answer to the question, instantly flew off into theory,
and that, as wc shall show presentl}^, a most unintelligible and
ludicrous theory. He would not consent to discuss what the mea-
sure was; he would have nothing but doctrines on currency and
banking; and what sort of things currency doctrines have been
the world by this time has learned by a miserable experience.

It is our object in the present article to clear up, if possible,
the existing confusion, and to extricate from beneath the accu-
mulated rubbish the true nature and character of the Bank
Act of 1841. To this end, we shall first of all state the posi-
tive enactments of the Act, such as they are in themselves,
independently of every theory, whether of friends or opponents ;
and that done, we shall endeavour in the next place to put

The Bank Charter Act. 403

such an interpretation on its provisions as is suggested and
warranted solely by what tliey prescribe, equally without re-
ference to any doctrines of currency or banking which that
interpretation may confirm or impugn. When we have thus
obtained a clear view of the Act, — the true Act, and not
the imaginative and fictitious creation of currency mystics,
— we shall notice some of the extravagant assertions which,
have been made as to the design and import of this mea-
sure.

The main enactments of the law of 1844 on the Charter of
the Bank of England are five.

1. It separates the function of the issue of bank-notes from
the banking business of the Bank of England.

2. It ordains that the Bank of England shall assign fourteen
millions of government securities to the Issue Department, and
shall receive from it fourteen millions of bank-notes ; and it
orders that department to issue to the public notes for any quan-
tity of gold-bullion which may be lodged with it for the purchase
of such notes, and to repay sovereigns on demand for all notes
presented to it by the public.

3. It limits the issues of notes by country banks, according
to the average of their circulation up to a certain time.

4. It prohibits the establishment of new country banks of
issue.

5. It provides that, if any of the country banks should cease
to issue notes, the Bank of England shall be authorised to issue
notes, without any deposit of securities or bullion, to the extent
of two-thirds of the lapsed issues of such country banks.

It is plain, from the first clause of this statement, that the
Bank of England is placed by this law upon the same footing as
every other bank in the kingdom. It is only the largest bank
amongst many others, with a special and very big customer — the
Government. On the other hand, the Issue Department is really
and truly made an office of the state, working by purely mecha-
nical rules — an automaton, whose movements are destitute of all
volition and control, obeying a fixed self-acting rule, without
intellect, thought, or opinion. The Bank of England supplies
the requisite machinery to this automaton : it furnishes premises,
clerks, ledgers, paper, vaults, and pens and ink, and then leaves
it to act of itself That department, working thus in certain
rooms provided by the Bank of England, simply responds to the
impulses impressed on it by the public. When five sovereigns
are dropped into its hand, a note is mechanically passed across
the counter. When the same note reappears on another day,
the operation is reversed : the sovereigns are given out ; the
note is called in and cancelled. And this action the automaton

VOL. IV. e e

404 The Bank Charter Act.

repeats as often as any living mortal sets it goiog by the pre-
sentation of a note or sovereigns.

In the rooms allotted to the automaton, the governor of the
Bank of England, or any of its directors, stands on precisely the
same level as every other member of the community. He can
get notes for his gold, or gold for his notes. He can obtain
supplies for his bank, the Bank of England, in identically the
same way as the chairman of the London and Westminster Bank,
or Smith, Payne, and Smiths procure the supplies they need,
whether of gold or notes. In the Issue Department of its pre-
mises, the Bank of England appears as a private bank, and abso-
lutely as nothing else. It can give no order whatever about the
notes issued under its name, and can in no manner whatever
control or guide the action of the automaton.

It is much to be regretted that the Act did not bestow a
distinct and independent name on the office which was to exer-
cise the function of issue. Its framers evidently had not thought
out their own enactments to the bottom ; they did not fully per-
ceive that they were creating an absolutely separate and inde-
pendent body. The names of Banking and Issue Departments,
coupled with the fact that the bank-note still carries the name of
the Bank of England on its front, and is signed in behalf of that
corporation, have perpetuated the illusion that the thing done was
the division of one and the same body into two subordinate de-
partments; a most thorough error, the prolific parent of con-
tusion of thought, endless labyrinths of theorj^, and intermin-
able lengths of most unprofitable questions and answers. Only
those who have travelled much in these regions can be aware of
the frightful and wearisome absurdities which have been generated
by the absence from the Act of a positive declaration that it was
creating a new body with a new name. The omission of every
allusion to the Bank of England in the automaton's note would
have rescued countless minds from hopeless perplexity. There
were excellent reasons why the business of issuing the public
notes should be continued on the premises of the Bank of Eng-
land ; for it had the means of doing the work more cheaply than
any other body could have done it, and the convenience both to
the Bank and the great money-dealers in the City of having
immediate access to the stores of gold and notes is immense.
But there was no valid reason for not giving an independent
title to the new establishment of issue. Till general use has
sanctioned some other name, we propose to designate the Issue
Department by that of the " bank mint ;'' for in reality it is a
mint which has lodgings at the Bank.

The second provision of the Act, first of all, gives to the Bank
of England the profit of the dividends on the securities lodged at

The Bank Charier Act. 405

the bank mint for the fourteen millions of notes which are given
to the Bank. The remainder of the public get no profit from the
bullion which they deposit with the mint_, in return for the notes
procured by its means ; they simply obtain, in return for the lodg-
ment of an expensive commodity, a voucher or warrant, which is
empowered to circulate as legal tender for the payment of debts.
That voucher, the bank-note, possesses qualities which in many
of the transactions of commerce confer a great superiority on it
over coin. It is far lighter in weight, is more easily carried and
guarded, is more rapidly counted and dealt out, and, by means of
the number it bears, admits of being more readily traced and pro-
tected. It is certain, therefore, that there will always exist a
considerable demand for such paper currency in preference to
coin ; and the Act, by providing for its issue, satisfies an acknow-
ledged and legitimate want of the public.

It is further clear that the bullion deposited in the bank
mint furnishes complete security for the payment of all notes
presented to the mint, as far as it goes ; but there is an admitted
ambiguity as to the provision made for the solvency of the four-
teen millions, which were assigned to the Bank of England against
the deposit of government securities, and which will remain un-
covered by sovereigns when the vaults of the mint have been
emptied. The question can arise only on the occurrence of one or
other of two very improbable suppositions : the quantity, namely,
of bank-notes desired by the public sinking below fourteen mil-
lions, or a bankruptcy of the Bank of England with less than
20s. in the pound for its creditors. In the case of either of these
two events, it is not clear to whom the securities deposited at
the Bank belong, — whether to the mint, which could sell them
at its pleasure, or to the Bank of England, and, by implication,
to its creditors. The construction which ought to be placed upon
the Act is confessedly obscure, and opinions seem to be about
equally divided on the point. Our own leads us to the belief
that these securities are specifically pledged to the note-holders,
and could not be claimed as an asset of the Bank by its creditors
in the event of bankruptcy ; but a legal judgment alone can de-
cide the point. The public, however, may console itself with the
reflection, that the historically unbroken credit of the Bank
of England, and the improbability of a foreign invasion, divest
the danger of all practical importance ; though we do not think
it quite so impossible that the day may come when less than
fourteen millions of bank-notes may not become enough for
the wants of the public by the multiplication of banking expe-
dients. In such case, the question will be easily solved by some
enactment respecting the disposal of these securities.

It is certain, therefore, that the portion of the circulation of

406 The Bank Charter Act.

Bauk-of-England notes above fourteen millions, and, if the opi-
nion of ^Ir. Hubbard and other eminent witnesses as well as our
own is correct, the whole amount of that circulation is covered,
in respect of solvency, by an adequate protection; and more-
over gold is actually provided, ready for immediate payment, for
every note above the fourteen millions. These are the direct
enactments of the Act.

And further, — and this is a point of extreme importance for
theoretical discussion, — it is manifest that no restriction of any
kind is placed on the issues of Bank-of-England notes by the
Act of 1844 — no limitation whatever of their numbers. If the
public chooses, it may get 100 millions of these notes. It must
buy them with gold, no doubt, or, if the phrase is preferred, it
must deposit gold against their issue. But if any causes placed
any large quantity of bullion in the hands of the public, and it
was stored away at the mint in exchange for vouchers or notes,
the Act of 1844 imposes no limitation whatever on the numbers
of the notes which may be thus obtained from the bank mint.
A¥e say nothing in this place as to the probability of such an oc-
currence, nor of the causes which may lead to it, nor of the results
it may generate. Our business here is simply to ascertain what
the Act enacts or permits. It may be said, of course, that the
expensiveness of the notes — the sovereigns required to obtain
them — constitute a very real limitation on their numbers. This
may be so ; only, if there be such a limitation, it is one of the
same kind identically as the limitation on demand imposed by
the costliness of champagne or grapes, or any other commodity.
On this point we shall have more to say presently.

The third provision of the Act left the notes of country bankers
in circulation in 1844 untouched. Their numbers cannot be
increased ; but they were allowed to circulate as before, with no
other provision for their solvency, or for the reserve of gold to be
kept in hand for paying them on demand, than what existed be-
fore the passing of the Act. Any of these country banks of issue
may still fail, and, as far as the law goes, may pay their note-
holders half-a-crown in the pound.

But the fourth provision, along with the prohibition of in-
creased numbers in the third, arrests the growth of such a sys-
tem, and renders its ultimate extinction, by amalgamation or
other processes, highly probable. Country banks of issue, like
every thing else, come to an end; and, as they cannot revive
in their progeny, the race, if the law continues unchanged, is
doomed to disappear.

Such are the facts of the law. What is their interpretation?
What principles do they embody ? Of what elements are they
composed ?

The Bank Charter Act. 407

It is a law on currency : to the science of currency, therefore,
must it be taken to be measured and judged. The value of the
judgment pronounced will consequently depend on the accuracy
with which the science of currency is understood by the judges.
But, alas, where shall we find these judges ? From which school
shall we select them ? Who shall give us a clear and intelli-
gible statement of the teaching of that science ? And yet we
cannot pronounce upon the law of 1844 without some definite
rule to apply to it ; so we must lay down for ourselves and our
readers the principles of currency on which our decision will
be founded. We shall not prove them here by a formal in-
vestigation ; we shall simply state them in the form in which we
hold them.

Currency is the science of the instruments of exchange, and
of nothing else. Such instruments have been devised for two
purposes: to supersede barter, which is incompatible with the
existence of a large society and the progress of civilisation, and
to furnish a measure by which the value of all commodities shall
be ascertained. For these ends, a single commodity, generally
gold or silver, is selected, with which every form of property is
compared; so that value comes to mean the quantity of one
commodity which is equivalent to a quantity of another. The
value of a bale of cotton means in England the quantity of gold
which is given in exchange for it, or its equivalent; and just as
the gold measures the cotton, so the cotton measures the gold.
The two commodities stand upon a perfect level; and the re-
spective amounts of each given in exchange, one for the other,
are determined solely by the intrinsic worth of each, by their
ultimate cost of production. If cotton becomes more plentiful,
gold remaining the same, more cotton is given for gold ; the
price of cotton falls : on the other hand, if gold is produced in
greater abundance and cheapness — cotton standing still — more
gold will be required as a set-off" for the cotton; the price of
cotton rises, or, in other words, the price of gold falls. This
relative cost of production alone regulates prices ; and the selec-
tion of one of the commodities, gold, as the standard and measure
of value, has not a particle of influence on the determination of
prices. Currency has nothing to do with the regulation of prices;
it merely supplies the rule or instrument of measure.

To meet the convenience and the wants of daily buying and
selling, small portions of this measuring commodity, of fixed
weight and quality of material, are made and authenticated by a
government stamp, and are called pounds, shillings, and so on ;
mere names, which determine nothing as to their value, nothing
as to the amount of commodities which the owners of all other
property will give for them. These small instruments of exchange,

408 The Bank Charter Act,

these coins, are pure machines made to perform a certain
work, in the same manner identically as ploughs are constructed
for tillage, carriages for conveyance, chairs to sit upon, and
watches to measure time by ; they are all machines for effecting
a particular duty ; and there is absolutely no difference between
coins and any of the rest, except in the particular kind of work
they are employed to accomplish. And as there may be too
many ploughs on a farm, too many carriages in a gentleman's
stables, and too many chairs in a room, so there may be too
many coins in a given country; too many, that is, for the work
they have to do, for the exchanges which require to be effected
by them. A gentleman may have more sovereigns than he can
conveniently carry ; a shopkeeper may be inundated with shil-
lings ; a bank may be gorged with gold that it cannot use. In
all such cases the result is one and the same : the surplus coin
gravitates to some common reservoir, where it lies useless, and
as destitute of all action or effect as the superfluous harrows
that slumber under a farmer's shed. These coins may equally
be too few as well as too many ; an occurrence which frequently
befalls shillings, and very rarely sovereigns, in particular locali-
ties in England. As a fact of experience, and wholly irrespec-
tively of theory, we hold it to be certain that since 1819 gold has
always been in excess in England — that there has always been
more gold in this country than is wanted for carrying on ex-
change and the general business of the people, including the
fitting reserve which all bankers must keep as a natural part of
their stock in trade.

In no civilised country can all the exchanges of property, all
purchases in shops and warehouses, be carried on by the agency
of coin alone. Property is bought and sold by means of bills, of
cheques drawn on bankers, and, most of all, of book-credit — that
is, items of debt entered in the books of traders. These are not
actual payments, real exchanges of one commodity for another,
but mere promises to pay, pledges for payment enforced by law,
for which it is found men are willing to give away their goods.
Some of these instruments of exchange, such as bills, and not
Tinfrequently cheques, are passed on from hand to hand before
they are finally presented for a real payment in gold : and as in
this way they effect many exchanges before they are ultimately
extinguished, it is obvious that these instruments collectively
supersede to an enormous extent the otherwise inevitable use of
coin; whilst they possess this transcendent economy, that the
bits of paper they are written on cost nothing, whilst the coins
they supersede would have been necessarily purchased from
abroad with a heavy cost of English jiroducts and capital. They
furnish also the additional advantage, that they avoid the loss,

The Bank Charter Act. 409

whicli is by no means inconsiderable^ of tlie wear and tear of the
metal whicli it suffers in daily circulation.

The one distinguishing characteristic of these mere promises
to pay — these bills, cheques, and book-credits — is, that the accept-
ance of them is entirely voluntary on the part of the creditor ; no
man being obliged to take them as a legal discharge of his debt.
Bat there is a variety of the cheque which occupies a partially
different position — the bank-note, the public cheque, so to say,
which a banker draws upon himself, and promises to pay in coin
on demand. In essence it is identical with the private cheque,
being merely a promise to pay, and effecting exchanges of pro-
perty in precisely the same manner, and frequently not circu-
lating, before its cancelment, through so many hands as many a
private cheque. But it is also invested with a sort of semi-pub-
lic character. As a rule, the private cheque does not circulate ;
it effects one purchase or aggregate of purchases, and is immedi-
ately sent in for payment. The reason of this fact is plain. The
value of the private cheque depends on the solvency of a private
person, and the state of his account at his banker's ; and for the
mass of men this is too frail a protection against non-payment
to allow of this cheque being long kept in circulation. It is
otherwise with the bank-note. The Bank is a semi-public in-
stitution ; whilst the immense superiority of the note over the
sovereign in convenience, portableness, and security against rob-
bery, induces the public to employ it in preference to the sove-
reign. It circulates, therefore, in town and market; and its
acceptance is scarcely voluntary ; for a tradesman vrho should
refuse to take the notes current in his locality would expose him-
self, not only to ill-will and want of custom, but often to positive
inability sell his goods. To this half-compulsory character the
state has added, in the case of the Bank-of-England note, the
quality of legal tender; that is, the full compulsory obligation
on every creditor to accept it as the discharge of his debt.

It is obvious that the worth of a promise to pay consists in
the certainty of payment when demanded. As the law compels
no one to accept a private cheque, it is the business of the man
who gives property in exchange for it to consider for himself the
prospects of payment. It is his affair to weigh the value of the
signature, and the chances of there being money in the signer's
account at the bank. But the public cannot easily act thus with
a bank-note ; they are more or less obliged to take the notes in
circulation : and in the case of the Bank-of-England note, they
must perforce accept it. Hence the need of some legal provision
to ensure the solvency of the public cheque or note ; and on one
point of this provision all the world is agreed. The only means
for keeping the value of the promise on a level with the actual

410 The Bank Charter Act,

payment is the peremptory obligation on the issuer to pay it on
demand. Without complete convertibility, the promise to pay
is insecure, and immediately becomes exposed to a peculiar and
formidable danger. The utmost harm of superfluous sovereigns
is that they are compelled to lie idle; they are expelled, like
drones, from the circulation, and are sent to sleep in the cellars.
But inconvertible notes, green-backed promises to pay for which
no payment can be demanded, may be sent forth in unlimited
numbers, and, which is the pinch of the matter, stay out in unli-
mited numbers. If a tradesman finds that twenty sovereigns will
do the day^s work of his till, and he has thirty, he will send oft'
ten to his banker, who will forward them to the cellars in Thread-
needle Street. No more sovereigns remain out than there is work
for. But if the notes are issued as they are now by the American
government, and, the valve opening one way only, cannot be sent
back again when not wanted, they quickly expand into excessive
numbers, far beyond what the exchanges to be effected require.
Hence every holder is anxious to part from them, and, finding
no outlet, consents to part from them at a loss ; they sink to a
discount, and there is no fixed limit for that discount if the
inconvertible issues are continued.

Convertibility, then, or the obligation to pay on demand under
pain of bankruptcy, is acknowledged to be the one vital indis-
pensable condition for a paper currency which shall remain on a
level with coin, and shall guarantee its holders against w^hat
really can hardly be called less than robbery. But other con-
ditions for a paper circulation have come under discussion ; we
shall notice some of these when we speak in detail of the provi-
sions of the Bank Act of 1844.

Such is the substance of the science of currency, — such the
rule by which we purpose to judge the enactments which we
have to consider. We now proceed to perform this task.

1. The first feature which this Act presents to the enquirer is
the very marked characteristic, that it is purely and exclusively
a currency law. Its first deed is to cut currency and banking
clean asunder, thereby acknowledging one of the most funda-
mental principles of currency. It creates an establishment of
currency, taking away from a bank — the Bank of England — all
control over the management of the currency, and erecting in its
place a manufactory of currency, a mint, a factory and shop for
the production and sale of certain machines. The bank mint
which it establishes is a genuinely sister institution to the Royal
Mint of the government. The one sells pure metal only; the
other two sorts of machines — one of paper, the other of metal.
The regulations vary only in the necessary details and adapta-
tions ; in principle, in essence, in action on commerce, the two

The Bank Charter Act. . 411

institutions are perfectly alike. There is not a trace of banking
from the first to the last line of the statute ; it is a set of mint
regulations — nothing more. No one has ever said that the issue
of sovereigns and shillings by the Royal Mint has any thing to do
with discount or rates of interest, or banking reserves, or supplies
of capital to the public ; and no one ought ever to have said that
the bank mint has any relation whatsoever to these matters.
The banker^s trade is one thing ; the supply of instruments of
exchange — of coin, or its special substitute, the note — is an-
other. No one has ever connected the building of steamers with
deposits and commercial crises or tight money markets ; and no
one ought ever to have connected them with the fabrication and
sale of those particular machines which transfer property from
one man to another, just as cranes haul cargoes out of ships.
The Act of 1844 does not contain one single word of encourage-
ment or sanction for such a delusion. And yet is it not marvel-
lous that the Committees of the House of Commons, which were
appointed for the very purpose of examining the character and
effects of this statute, never from first to last understood its
exclusively manufacturing and shopkeeping nature? Members
and witnesses alike, all came to the investigation incurably
tainted with the belief that the Act had banking effects ; that
somehow it had influence on the supplies of capital in the
money market ; that it had peculiar effects on trade ; and that,
in one way or other, it was something different from the ma-
chinery which made hats or manufactured yarns, or supplied
any other want of civilised society. Had it been clearly per-
ceived that currency has no more to do with banking than with
brewing, that vast multitude of questions and answers under
which the Committee groaned for so many days during the two
years of enquiry would have been nipped in the bud and never
have come into existence. It would have been seen that, with
very few exceptions, the attention of the Committee had been
occupied with totally irrelevant matter, — with investigations
which might just as rationally have been addressed to the car-
pet or to the cotton trade as to the Act of 1844. Enquiries
into crises, difficulties of discount, pressure on banking reserves,
mercantile credit, over-speculation and over-trading, and rates
of interest charged by the Bank of England, would have been
at once struck out from an investigation which had to con-
sider a regulation of currency. No wonder, therefore, at the
perplexity which presses so uncomfortably on the reader as he
goes over the subtle but- most misty utterances of so many emi-
nent men. The very subtlety and acuteness of their intelligence
only seem to involve their thoughts in still deeper obscurity ; for
when once launched on a false hypothesis, when hopelessly com-

412 The Bank Charter Act.

mitted to the assumption that phenomena of banking were re-
lated to currency, the power of their minds produced only a
succession of desperate plunges, to escape from the confusion
which they were conscious of labouring under. An error in a
primary premiss always generates a long progeny of disorder;
and there is scarcely one of these many thousand questions and
answers which did not feel the effects of the original sin.

2. We remark, secondly, that this bank mint is not under
the control of the government ; this is an enormous merit.
B-easons for and against placing the issue of bank-notes in
the hands of a bank, or of a private company constructed for
that special purpose, may be urged with real force on both sides ;
but not a single good reason can be pleaded in defence of a direct
issue of promises to pay by a government. The vital condition
of convertibility would be destroyed at the core. The promises
of a government to pay on demand are the worst that can pos-
sibly be conceived. There is a perpetual power, through sheer
strength or immoveableness, not to fulfil the promise; and no
adequate force can be framed which can at all times be relied on
for compelling a government to provide money when demanded.
A bank or a private company may be declared bankrupt, and
to them bankruptcy is ruin ; but a government would bear with
great equanimity the reproach that there was no gold in store
for its notes. The medieval kings made no scruple of adulterat-
ing the coin of the realm ; modern governments are very lax
about making good their obligations to pay notes on demand.
Austria and America have shown very conspicuously how much
can be done in that direction. An English government, suddenly
obliged to send a large military chest abroad, would find little
difficulty in persuading a parliament bent on war that the best
thing to be done was to send the currency reserves to Malta or
Canada. Currency would be swamped in politics, and a safe
circulation of paper would be at an end. The automaton created
by the Act is, no doubt, an institution of the state; for it has no
connection with the Bank of England, and it derives its powers
and organisation from the law alone. But it is an automaton ;
and its unintelligent self- working machinery lies locked up in a
case, of which the government does not, and it is to be hoped
never will, possess a key.

3. Thirdly, it is plain that the fundamental principle of per-
fect convertibility is thoroughly carried out by the Act of 1 844.
This is the essence of a sound paper currency ; and it is not to
be disputed that, in this respect, the Act of 1844 conforms to the
requirements of the highest science. Fourteen millions of notes
are made safe by the deposit of seciuritics, pledged, as we believe,
for their protection ; and the remainder of the notes possess an

The Bank Charter Act, MS

equal amount of precious metal, ready at a moment's notice to
be produced, and under positive orders of ]aw to be paid over to
any holder claiming tbeir redemption. The reserve is of the
amplest, and is always at hand. Anxiety is out of the question ;
for it is barely possible that the public should ever require so
few as fourteen millions of bank-notes. It is too useful, too
convenient a currency, too admirably fitted a machinery for the
settlement of accounts in the throng and stir of the City, not to
be in large and perpetual demand. The automaton is an in-
surmountable bulwark against the robbery and the disasters of
inconvertible notes.

4. Fourthly, the Act provides a reserve of gold to meet notes
presented for payment — a perfectly ample reserve, as we have
just stated ; and it regulates the action of that reserve by a novel
and peculiar arrangement. Inconvertible notes require no re-
serve, for there is no obligation in their case to fulfil the pro-
mise to pay ; but convertible paper of necessity implies a reserve,
a supply of gold that shall be equal to the demand, not only of
ordinary, but also of extraordinary times. The Act of 1844 de-
termines this reserve by the fixed and unchangeable adjustment
of a line drawn at fourteen millions (strictly, now, fourteen and
a half millions) of notes, for which solvency, but not gold, is pro-
vided, and a compulsory deposit of gold for every pound above
these fourteen millions. It assumes that such a reserve will be
sufficient for all possible demands ; and it is incontestable that
this assumption is well founded.

But here two very important and very debateable questions
immediately arise. First : is the drawing of a fixed line, beyond
which all issues of notes must have a foundation of gold in the
cellar, the best and most efficient machinery for managing the
reserve ? and, secondly, is fourteen and a half millions the true
point at which the Act ought to have drawn the line ?

The first question, the fixed line or limit, is resolved at once
in the affirmative, if the method of a self-acting machine, an
automaton, is adopted for the issue of bank-notes : it is the sim-
plest, the most direct, and the least complicated arrangement
which could be applied to such a brainless organisation. But it
is otherwise if the issue is allotted to a bank, or a special com-
pany, or any other intelligent body. A fixed line, on the very
face of the matter, implies a reflection on the wisdom or the
intelligence of the issuer, a distrust of his prudence and judg-
ment. As such it is indefensible; because it involves the ad-
mission, that the mind selected for the control of the issues is
in reality unfitted for the task. It contains a contradiction in
principle ; and all contradictions generate evil. It is easy to per-
ceive the absurdities which it would perpetrate. The reserve

414 Tlie Bank Charter Act.

must be prepared to face all possible demands; and the fixea
limit, if sound, must be so drawn as to have a supply of metal
for the maximum of demand, for the largest quantity of gold
which the public may require. No one needs to be told that
such a quantity immensely exceeds what is asked for in calm and
steady times ; and what sense would there be in requiring an
experienced and intelligent issuer to bury in lock*ed-up vaults
treasure capable of being applied to purposes profitable both to
himself and the community ? A very bad harvest, we know,
creates a sudden and vast importation of corn, for which, usually,
the payment is in bullion : at such a season the exchange of notes
for gold will be at its largest. But reverse the supposition, and
imagine a bountiful crop just safely gotten into the garners : is
a thinking man to be required to keep the same stock of bullion,
which he knows will not be applied for, as he did when all the
exchanges of corn-growing countries were enforcing remittances
of bullion ? Such a restriction is an imputation on his good
sense, and his capacity to administer ; it proclaims that the task
of adapting a reserve to the fluctuating wants of the public for
a particular commodity transcends the human faculties, or too
severely tempts human weakness : and if the charge be true, the
automaton becomes inevitably the right and only instrument of
issue. A fixed limit, and issue of paper currency by intelligent
minds, we hold to be two inconsistent and, in the long-run,
incompatible things.

Well, then, this being so, is an automaton, an irrational agent,
the only safe, the only natural and legitimate instrument for the
management of a currency of notes? How is it possible, we
reply, to maintain such a proposition in the face of the fact that
the Bank of England did, from 1819 to the time of the passing of
this Act, so manage its notes as that they never sufiered at any
moment a breath of depreciation, and all through that period
supplied England with a perfectly convertible, sound, and ever-
trusted currency of paper ? How can such an assertion be made
in the teeth of a highly- developed currency of notes in Scot-
land, founded on an exceedingly slender reserve of gold, work-
ing with unbroken success for more than a century, efiecting an
unrivalled economy of expensive coin, and intensely valued by
the population? Theorists may choose to say that the conver-
tibility of the bank-note was in great danger at various times,
and that the paper notes of Scotland are inadequately sustained;
but fact and science rebut the charge. Every practical witness
declares that at no time has the Bank-of-Eugland note, since
cash payments have ceased to be forbidden, held its head lower
than the sovereign ; at no time has the public preferred gold
as safer and sounder than the note. The Bank's reserve, its re-

The Bank Charter Act, 415

serve as banker, has often been sorely pressed to supply money
to claimants ; but the difficulty has lain in finding notes as much
as gold, for the public was indifierent which of the two they
carried away. Never was there a greater run upon the Bank
than in 1825 ; but the thing which saved its solvency was the
discovery of one million of unburnt one-pound notes. They were
greedily taken by the public, so perfectly at that terrible mo-
ment was the note the equal and the match of gold. Great
authorities have chosen to say that the bank-note was then ex-
posed to imminent peril ; but the very reverse is the truth. The
bank-note then, as now, or at any period since 1819, has never
been exposed to the slightest risk of depreciation or insolvency ;
and what fact reveals science ratifies. It tells us that the sol-
vency of a truly responsible issuer is a complete and sufficient
guarantee for convertibility; and it accepts the evidence supplied
by experience, that the Bank of England and the Bank of Scot-
land have been found to be truly solvent and responsible issuers,
and have furnished practical and trustworthy security for sol-
vency and convertibility. If the Bank Act of 18i4 and the
automaton have created a solvent and convertible currency, the
Bank of England and the Bank of Scotland have done the
same. The theoretical machinery of the Act has not produced,
in the estimate of science, results one iota more valuable or
trustworthy than the practical management of these private
companies.

But, exclaim the authorities, look at the awful state of the bul-
lion in 1825, 1847, and at other terrible periods ; see how fright-
fully the note was brought to the edge of the precipice; the
country was within an ace of the suspension of cash payments.
The wrong inference, we reply. See with how little gold the huge
fabric of the Bank-of-England circulation was and can be trium-
phantly sustained. Amidst the terror of traders and the crash of
perishing firms, when panic convulsed every mind, and the best
houses trembled for existence ; when money was impossible, dis-
count not to be had, the rate of interest rising, and the City on
the verge of annihilation ; — one thing, and one thing only, stood
proudly unshaken and unshakeable amidst the howling storm.
Bank directors had lent away all their deposits ; commerce in
vain shrieked for more relief; the foundations of the Bank itself
tottered ; but its note never lost the public confidence for one
instant. Not for a second did any terrified spirit — neither, we
venture to assert. Lord Overstone nor Mr. Norman — feel the
remotest wish to ask for gold when the note was ofiered. And
why was this ? Because it was a mere tool, an instrument of
currency, and an agent only for transferring ownership; be-
cause its solvency was unquestioned, and its numbers in no

416 The Bank Charter Jet,

excess over the daily requirements of the public ; because, in a
word, it had nothing to do with banking and its incidents, its
prosperity or its disasters. Let no man assert, therefore, that
any measure was needed to protect (such is the phrase) the con-
vertibiHty of the note. The bank-note never fell under a cloud,
never felt a whiff of danger, before 1844. It has been safe since
the Bank Act ; it was equally safe before. It rests, doubtless,
on a larger reserve now than it did then ; but if a house is per-
fectly solid, nothing is gained by surrounding it with extra but-
tresses. What deceived the world was the actual smallness of
the Bank's reserve, and the manifest strain it was suffering. But
it was forgotten that that reserve was a combined resource for
banking and currency liabilities conjoined : and men failed to
perceive that the portion needed for paying notes on demand
was a trifle ; that the remainder, its incomparably larger part,
belonged to the banking business, and was plainly becoming
inadequate ; and that all the agitation among traders, and all
the danger to the Bank, threatened its banking affairs alone. If
a lesson was to be learnt from these fearful days, it was, as we
have stated above, not the danger of the note, but the trifling
reserve upon which its stability could be successfully supported.

But if the Bank of England in bygone times and Scotch
banks in our day were and are good and solid issuers of notes, it
must not be concluded that all bankers are equally fitted for that
function. The shipwrecks of 1825 teach a very different lesson.
They showed that the country bankers for the most part were
very bad issuers, because their solvency was unassured. Bankers
lost their money in banking; and when bankruptcy overtook
them, the holders of their notes were ruined. It was the busi-
ness of customers who kept accounts with the banks of their own
free choice to take heed to their own safety ; but the blow was
hard upon those who had taken the currency which circulated in
their neighbourhood. The truth was patent, that country bankers
were generally unsafe depositories of the function of supplying a
public currency ; but it was a truth resting on experience alone,
for the solidity of the Bank of England and the Scottish paper
flowed, not from any peculiarity in their banking nature, but
from the established fact that they had always been practically
solvent. We shall revert to this topic hereafter, when we come
to speak of the other provision of the Act of 1844.

But if there was to be an automaton and a limit, was the line
drawn at the right place ? And what is a right place, and upon
what principle was it to be determined ? The witnesses concur
in asserting, that the limit of fourteen millions sprang from
the observation of the circumstance that up to 1844 that sum
was about the lowest point to which the circulation of bank

TJie Bank Charter Jet. 417

paper had descended. Hence it was argued that there was no
likelihood of gold being asked for notes below that figure, and
that a reserve coextensive with the largest amount of notes that
have circulated above that point would supply gold for every
pound that could be practically demanded. A most empirical
process, unquestionably ; for who could tell v/hether, in future
years, the public might require more or fewer notes than it had
theretofore employed? It indicates but too truly, we fear, how
ignorant the men of that day were of the forces which regulated
the numbers of the bank-notes ; how little they perceived that
convenience, as well as the amount of other instruments of cur-
rency, determined the quantity of notes needed by the public.
The establishment of a score of clearing houses throughout the
country might easily have deranged the calculation, and reduced
the bank paper to seven instead of fourteen millions. And then,
when the line had been once drawn, it is very curious to observe
the tenacity of conservative Englishmen clinging resolutely to an
existing practice, even when the principle which led to its adop-
tion suggested later and consistent alteration. In 1857, thirteen
years after the enactment, it was pointed out in the Committee
that as during that long period the lowest figure of the paper
currency had not sunk below sixteen millions, the principle which
selected foui'teen now as cogently required sixteen ; but not one
single witness, though compelled to admit the fact, could be got
to recommend the new adjustment. Upon the ground of the
framers of the Act, it is clear that sixteen millions is the true
figure; but is that the right principle for fixing the limit? How
does it work in practice ? Under the pressure of a heavy export
of gold, the stock of gold has sunk to eight millions, once to a
little only above six; and Lord Overstone thinks that a very
proper amount. We are of the opposite opinion ; we hold this
sum to be a monstrous and extravagant waste, justified neither by
fact nor reasoning. For what purpose does the automaton, the
bank mint, need a reserve of gold in hand ? To secure the con-
vertibility of the note. And why is convertibility demanded ? To
prevent the depreciation of the note ; to guard against its being
discredited ; to protect it from a discount ; to keep it on an equa-
lity with gold. But we have just seen that these great objects
were triumphantly accomplished when the bullion in the mixed
banking and currency reserve stood as low as three millions, or
even one million. But, much more, people nowadays have for-
gotten that for years the bank-note suffered neither discredit nor
depreciation, and was the equal and rival of the guinea, when posi-
tively it had no reserve at all — when gold could not be obtained
for it — when convertibility was actually prohibited by law. And
how was this brought about ? By a natural law, of which the

418 The Bank Charter JcL

authorities seem to be ignorant, — the law that when notes are
known to have been issued by a solvent body, and circulate only
in such numbers as satisfy the actual wants of the public for
effectinpj their ordinary transactions, there is a natural capacity
and willingness in the public to hold these notes, and not to
send them in for payment, simply on account of their usefulness
and their convenience as instruments of exchange.

In the presence of such facts it is idle to insist on these out-
rageous reserves. The danger alleged to threaten the converti-
bility of the note is a pure bugbear of Lord Overstone and his
school; and it has frightened the rest of the world, who still
associate the large combined reserve of former days for the
double purpose of banking and currency with the single object
of providing for the currency alone. Eight millions may be a
proper or even a low figure for the banker's reserve of the pri-
vate corporation of the Bank of England ; but it is a sheer waste
and absurdity in the cellars of the automaton, as a provision
for bank-notes only. For oar part, we see no reason whatever
why a minimum of a single million should not be held to be a
thoroughly ample and satisfactory reserve. If in the worst times
— not of commercial difficulty, for that is of no account here,
but of pressure on the bank mint for gold in exchange for notes
— the reserve does not sink below a million of hard sovereigns
still at the command of the automaton, what can the country or
the City want more ? What possible end can a larger supply
secure ? For let us suppose the worst that can happen ; let us
imagine the reserve to have been entirely exhausted, not a sove-
reign left in the vaults, fourteen millions of bank-notes in circu-
lation, and, as before 1819, not an ounce of bullion to sustain
them. What would be the harm, we ask ? Is there no remedy ?
Must the automaton point to its empty till, and send back the
note-holders with the dismal reply of " No assets" ? Nothing
of the sort : a most efficient remedy is at hand, ready to extin-
guish the peril on the instant. Here are fourteen milhons of
Consols, or other securities : what so easy, what so natural and
efficacious, as to sell a million or two's worth of them, and pro-
cure gold or notes from the general market ? That the country
will always demand a large quantity of so convenient a currency
as bank-notes is certain : but suppose it would not, — suppose
every note were sent in for payment ; what, then, would have
happened? — the sale of the Consols, nothing ^more, except that
the poor automaton would have given up the ghost. He would
not be the only victim, shriek the authorities : every banker in
the City would die of fright, if he were told there was no gold
in the Issue Department. Let them be comforted : neither men
nor bank-notes die so easily. The bankers would be simply as

The Bank Charter Jet, 419

they were ; they would have lost nothing. Twenty long yeai"s
have elapsed since the automaton was entrusted with the su-
preme management of the issue of bank-notes^ and during that
period the City has been convulsed, in 184^7 and 1857, by two of
the severest commercial pressures on record ; but never once has
the bullion descended to six millions. Six millions of the ori-
ginal gold on which the automaton was reared have reposed un-
disturbed in the depths of the Issue Department's vault : not a
seal has been broken, not an ingot stirred : they have slumbered
on unused by bankei's, and of no more value to mankind than
when they lay under the rocks of Australia. If such facts fail
to demonstrate the gigantic absurdity of the present limit, and
the ignorant nervousness of traders and writers on currency,
reasoning must be thinist aside as a waste of time, and blind
timidity be suffered to hold the government of the world.

But what is the harm, after all ? still urge the authorities ; it
is comfortable to think that there is so great a treasure in the
couutry ; what matters it if it is a little too large? A little too
large ! People who speak thus, who with Lord Overstone call
8,000,000/. a very satisfactory figure for a minimum, have but a
faint notion of the waste and the cost at which this utterly use-
less heap of metal is kept up. One million, we assert, is a perfectly
sufficient minimum ; the remaining seven are pure excess. And
what is their annual expense ? 350,000/. a year, at five per cent,
some think ; but this is but the smallest portion of the loss ac-
tually incurred. These seven millions can be sold abroad for their
equivalent in capital, for an equal value of food, clothing, and raw
material for the labourers of England. It is not too much to say
that capital applied to average industry yields a profit of at least
fifty per cent in the wages given to labourers, and in the several
profits of the many hands through which a commodity passes be-
fore it is finally consumed. Take it at thirty per cent only ; and on
seven millions we get a sum of upwards of 2,000,000/., which year
after year the unemployed and unemployable reserve of the Issue
Department costs England. And what is it that keeps up this fear-
ful waste ? The unreflecting and unscientific timidity of Bank di-
rectors, who cannot learn to see the difference between the reserve
of the Bank and the reserve of the automaton; the ignorant
belief of the multitude that plenty of gold at the Bank must make
things safe ; the notion that somehow all this gold cannot be use-
less and without effect ; and, most of all, the perverse conven-
tionalities, the arbitrary and uninductive assumptions, the inve-
terate association of banking with currency, in spite of all pro-
tests to the contrary, and the consequent unintelligible jargon
of writers like' Mr. Norman and Lord Overstone. They blunder
grossly as practical men when they defend and encourage such

VOL. IV. " //

420 The Bank Charter Act,

a senseless waste, whicli the evidence of their own eyes ought to
have told them was absolutely unneeded ; but they blunder far
more grossly, on the ground of science, by ignoring the essence
and objects of a paper circulation, and by their inconsistency in
desiring a currency of notes, and then striving to get rid of it by
indirect devices. They seem for a moment to realise the scientific
truth ; but as soon as they proceed to apply it, their steps falter,
and their language betrays uncertainty, hesitation, and fear. True
science never falters : arbitrary dogmatism is always conscious
that there is something which it does not understand, and takes
refuge in authoritative dicta. Eight millions are a satisfactory
reserve, says Lord Overstone ; and if he were questioned till night-
fall, more than this could not be got out of him. How different
is the walk of Mr. James Wilson, how firm his step, how un-
shrinking his confidence in pushing his science on to all its re-
sults! "The object of using paper to a certain extent instead of
coin," says Mr. Wilson to Mr. Weguelin, " is simply for the pur-
pose of economising that coin, and economising to that extent the
capital of the country. The greater the extent to which that can
be done with perfect safety to the community, the greater is the
advantage which the country derives from the adoption of a mixed
circulation of gold and paper."

How racy and refreshing is this language ! It contains about
the whole of the science of a paper currency j but how clear,
simple, and intelligible is that science ! Not a trace of banking
is found in these remarkable words ; not a hint that a paper cur-
rency and its reserves have any connection with the Bank of Eng-
land, or discounting of bills, or accommodation to trade, or a
reserve for meeting demands against deposits and liabilities.
But it tells the truth, the whole of that glorious truth which
Adam Smith unfolded, when he compared a currency of paper
to roads constructed in the air, which allowed the highways
of the earth to be cultivated and made productive. Paper is
intended to take the place of coin, teaches Mr. Wilson, because
paper costs nothing and gold costs much, and both perform ex-
actly the same work. And because paper is the cheap instru-
ment for effecting the same results, use as much paper as you
can, with no other restriction than " perfect safety to the com-
munity." Hence, in judging every form of paper cuiTency, try
it always by the single test — its means of guaranteeing the safety
of the public; if it fulfils that one condition, every other con-
sideration is of very minor importance. If, therefore, a mini-
mum of one million of reserve in the hardest times renders the
note safe, especially when backed by the power of selUng govern-
ment securities if required, sentence a paper circulation which
assigns more gold to the reserve than is needed, as violating in

The Bank Charter Jet, 421

respect of that excess the first object of a paper currency — the
saving the expense of the gold — as being a spurious, and not a
true, paper circulation; and amend the Act of 1844, by extending
the issues on securities to twenty millions instead of fourteen,
and thereby render it a truly scientific and defensible measure.

The two cardinal principles of perfect safety in combination
with the largest possible use are strikingly developed in the paper
circulation of Scotland. The absolute and unshakeable safety of
the automaton may abstractedly claim a theoretical superiority
over the issues of the Scottish banks ; but a century of success,
a century during which no member of the community ever lost
a pound by a Scottish note, proclaims that the end is achieved as
surely, as beneficially, by the Scottish system as by the Act of
1844. English banks of issue have lost their funds and ruined
their note-holders; Scottish banks of issue do not fail; or, if they
do, their notes are provided for, and the public is uninjured. Eng-
lish country bankers have therefore, as a rule, proved themselves
to be bad issuers, and Scottish bankers good issuers, of notes ;
and so long as this quality lasts, no man of sense or science can
attack them on either practical or scientific grounds. What
science commands is the accomplishment of perfect safety ; but
it prescribes no one invariable machinery for attaining that end.
If the Scottish notes are safe, — and no man has been hardy enough
to deny that they are safe, — they are unimpeachable in principle,
however much any one originating a system of paper circulation
might prefer one founded on the basis of an automaton. The
authorities, indeed, inveigh against the vast superstructure of
paper in Scotland on so trifling, so insignificant a reserve of
metal ; but what they decry with so much alarm constitutes a
merit of the highest scientific value in the Scottish system. If
the notes, as a fact, are perfectly safe, the more insignificant the
reserve of bullion the greater manifestly is the economy they
achieve, and the more splendidly have they realised the require-
ments of science.

On the other hand, as regards the second principle, the ex-
tent to which the circulation of paper is carried, the superiority of
Scotland over England is most decided and brilliant. Scotland
has one-pound notes, and England none ; the people of Scotland
prefer to be paid in notes rather than in sovereigns. Can words
describe more powerfully monetary success and the triumph of
commercial civilisation? Why must England forego the use of
one-pound notes, and pay for expensive and inconvenient sove-
reigns in their place ? Because the public was frightened by the
insolvency of country banks in 1825, and because bankers, partly
from routine and partly from a timidity derived from a secret con-
sciousness that they do not understand the principles of currency,
have fallen into a rut, and shrink from making a change. We

422 Tlie Bank Charter Jet.

have in vain looked through the two Bhie-books of 1857 and
1858 for a reason to justify the banishment of notes of low de-
nomination. The witnesses, when pressed, gave up the matter
in despair, and, acknowledging their inability to defend their
opinions, fell back upon sentiment. "I do not know,^' says
Mr. Newmarch, "that any inconvenience has arisen from the
existing state of things which would render it desirable even
to consider whether or not the circulation of one-pound notes
might be introduced." This from a man who lives in an island
of which Scotland forms a part. He is considered a great autho-
rity on currency. What can his notion be of the use of a paper
currency? He sees one-pound notes largely used and highly
valued by many of his fellow-subjects ; he ought to know that
these notes effect an immense saving of capital — that they cost
nothing, whilst sovereigns cost much — and yet he will not even
ask himself whether they might not be useful in England also.
Why not ? Because he does not choose, it seems ; and this is
called science, or practical authority. He may be a practical
authority on banking; but that answer betrays a profound igno-
rance of the very ends for which a paper currency exists.

We may now sum up the results which we have acquired ;
and we shall be thus enabled to pass a judgment on the leading
provisions of the Bank Act of 1 84 1.

We have discovered its high scientific merit in thoroughly
separating banking from currency. We have regretted the
phrase Issue Department as suggestive of a branch of the Bank
of England; whilst, in fact, an automaton has carried off the
whole currency from the Bank, and regulates it by laws as fixed
and self-acting as those that govern the motion of the planets. The
bank-note does not belong to the Bank of England ; and the Bank
has no greater command over the issues for furnishing accom-
modation to trade than any other bank or any other person in
the kingdom. We have seen that what the automaton does is
to sell bank-notes to all comers — selling first of all fourteen mil-
lions to the Bank of England for a payment in government secu-
rities, and demanding gold from all the rest of the world for any
quantity which they may choose to buy. The automaton has
thus been shown to provide perfect safety for every pound of
notes issued, and also to have at hand a larger quantity of sove-
reigns than the public can in any way be expected to demand.
The conditions of a sound paper currency are thus completely
fulfilled : the public may obtain any supplies they choose to ask
for of a most convenient and safe paper, invested also with the
privilege of legal tender in discharge of debts. But whether the
paper currency is as unassailable in detail as it is in principle, is
a point fairly open to dispute. It may be questioned whether a
fixed limit is the nicest machinerv for the determination of the

The Bank Charter Act, 423

stock of gold which must be kept ready for cashing notes pre-
sented for payment ; and^ supposing that question resolved in the
affirmative, the precise limit of fourteen millions may be much
more legitimately and successfully challenged. As compared with
Scottish issues, and the method of issue practised by the Bank
before 1844, when the bank-note formed a part of the general
liabihties of the Bank, and relied on the same common reserve as
the deposits and other obligations, the practical safety obtained
by means of the Act of 1844 is as good as, but no better than,
that realised by the other two systems. In all the three methods
alike the solvency and credit of the notes have been entirely
secured ; and that was all that was required to be done. The
authorities may rejoice in the reflection that, under the Act,
the note is always safe; but the Scots may and do rejoice as
legitimately, and so might have done the administrators of the
Bank-of-England currency before 1844. Theoretically, it can-
not be denied that the security given by the Issue Department
is higher still than that which prevailed previously, or which
now exists in the Scottish system ; for there are always bullion
and government securities in the bank mint coextensive with
the whole amount of the circulation, whilst it was not impossible
that the Bank of England should have become insolvent before
1844, or that the Scottish banks may not continue as sound as
they have been heretofore. But, practically, the difference disap-
pears in the common and coequal convertibility of the three sys-
tems. Whilst, therefore, we adopt the principle of 1844, which
completes the security for the whole paper circulation, and very
heartily approve the separation of currency from banking as ex-
cellent in doctrine and practice, still we cannot assert that the
law was demanded by any practical and demonstrated necessity,
or that the currency of Bank of England notes has derived from
it a single advantage that was not enjoyed before its enactment.
But when we come from the principle to the details of the
Act, our judgment is greatly modified, and we are compelled
to recognise and to censure the unwarranted and uncompens-
ated waste of capital which the drawing of the line at fourteen
millions has inflicted on the country. The loss is so heavy
and so gratuitous that, in our eyes, it extinguishes all the merit
of the Act of 1844 ; and if no corrective is applied, the loss
would make us perpetually regret the extinction of the old sys-
tem. Banking is infinitely better understood than it was twentj''
years ago, and the directors of the Bank of England would not
now conduct their affairs at hap-hazard, as they admit that they
did in former days. A couple of millions a year is a heavy cost
to pay for a little more theoretical nicety, and no practical bene-
fit, in the management of a paper circulation. However, there
is an easy locus pcenitentm left ; the Act can be amended, and

424 The Bank Charter Act.

thereby convei'ted into an excellent measure. All that is needed
is to raise the credit-issues, as they are called — the notes for
which no gold is stored in the cellars — to twenty millions. No
doubt a fierce yell from the authorities awaits such a proposal ;
but that signifies little ; we do not despair of obtaining such an
improvement in the end. It would come speedily, we feel cer-
tain, if the automaton worked at "Whitehall instead of on the
premises of the Bank. Not oncsingle element in the Act would
be altered by such a removal ; the Bank of England would not,
in that case, have a particle the less of control over the bullion
and the notes, seeing that now it has no command over them at
all. The public would speedily learn to perceive that trade
and discount have no connection whatever with the machinery
which issues out notes to the public, any more than with the
sovereigns which are emitted by the Royal Mint ; and they
would soon learn to care as little for the number of the notes in
circulation as they care for the quantity of sovereigns which
roam up and down England. They would rapidly get over all
alarm at a low reserve for notes when they saw that, whether
gold abounded or not, the credit and popularity of the note were
uninjured. In a word, as soon* as they imbibed the conviction
that the manufactory which supplied notes differed in no respect
from that which produces sovereigns, or any mill which turned
out calico, and was as incapable of furnishing supplies to the
money-market as any shop or factory in the land, all uneasiness
would be at an end as to the solvency and convertibility of paper
which was fully protected by securities. We say by securities,
because one great principle of the Act ought in no case to be
abandoned — the absolute safety afforded to the whole paper cur-
rency by the deposit of securities ensuring their safety. This is
the clear and legitimate superiority which the system of 1844
can claim over its predecessor, as well as over its Scottish rival.
Unlike the bullion in the cellar, these securities involve no loss
of capital ; for they would yield dividends to whomsoever they
might be allotted, and they may just as well be lodged in one
place as in another.

But such an improvement as the Act of 1844 ought not to
stop short of the restoration of one-pound notes. Such an act
of repentance would remove a disgrace from our financial legisla-
tion. The extinction of this most useful currency is a standing
memorial of the panic and the ignorance from which it sprang.
Prejudice and sentiment are the sole obstacles in the way of
this good deed ; for it is useless to seek for scientific or practical
arguments against its performance. There are persons, indeed,
who terrify themselves that then there would be no gold left in
the country; just as there were those who honestly Mieved that
the repeal of the corn-laws would throw English fields out of cul-

TJie Bank CJiarter Act, 425

tivation ; but the one are not more rational the other. England
has not starved since 1846 ; and even the lovers of bullion have
been driven to confess that foreigners constantly sell precious
metals to England. The balance of trade is^ as a rule, always
directing a stream of gold into England ; in other words_, Eng-
land has no difficulty in finding perpetual sellers of gold. So
entirely is the trade in the precious metals to be relied on_, that
a large portion of the Duke of Wellington's supplies for the
payment of his troops in Spain is said to have come to him
through Paris. Lancashire may often find cotton unprocurable ;
but it will never lack whatever gold it may desire, so long as it
has property wherewith to buy it.

We are now brought to the remaining enactments of 1844 —
the regulations imposed on the paper issues of the country
banks. A few words will suffice on this head. All issues, we
have seen, beyond the amount in circulation when the Act was
passed, as well as the creation of new banks of issue, are for-
bidden ; and, as the country circulation is diminished by the ex-
tinction of an amalgamation of country banks, the Bank of Eng-
land is authorised to extend its circulation without any deposit
of gold to the amount of two-thirds of the lapsed notes. It
is manifest that the framers of the Act desired and expected an
early extinction of the country circulation. There were some rea-
sonable grounds for that desire. The events of 1825 were still re-
cent in 1844, and distrust in the solvency of many of the country
issuers was justifiable. But their expectation has been falsified,
because they did not perceive the attachment which local popu-
lations feel for their country notes. To this day, in many dis-
tricts of England, local notes are deliberately preferred to Bank
of England notes, though the latter are a legal tender, and
though their solvency is placed on a higher level than was ever
obtained by English country notes. The country people are
more familiar with their old acquaintances; and, still more,
they conceive the risk of losing their money by forgery to be
much greater with the Bank of England note. The sentiment
is strong, whether reasonable or not ; and it clearly shows that
the right measure to have been adopted respecting them was
to place their notes on the same basis as the credit-issues of
the Bank, and to require the deposit with the government of
securities sufficient to guarantee the complete safety of the notes.
No doubt country bankers would prefer to hold their securities
at their own disposal; but they should remember that the issue
of a public currency is no inherent part of the private business
of banking. It is a public function derived from the State; and
indisputably the State has the fullest right to lay down the con-
ditions on which it will confer a public and profitable privilege.

It remains for us now to notice briefly some of the re-

426 The Bank Charter Act.

markable doctrines which have been associated with the Bank
Act of 1844.

The most common is the belief that the quantity of gold in
the Issue Department implies an increased reserve for the banking
department of the Bank of England, and consequently is a
security and accommodation for trade. This is an all-pervading
notion in commercial circles ; but it is a pure and baseless fal-
lacy. There is not a word of truth in it. Its existence would
be astonishing, were it not possible to trace its origin so clearly
to the former state of things, when the two reserves were
confounded into one, and when the gold reserved to pay notes
was mixed up in the same till with the gold destined to pay
depositors and all other creditors of the Bank. A strong re-
serve undoubtedly is a matter of great importance to a bank,
and to every person who has dealings with it ; but the gold be-
longing to the automaton, to the Issue Department, does not
belong to the Bank of England, but to the holders of bank-notes
all over the kingdom ; and it may be much or little, without
affecting by a single pound the banking and true reserve of the
Bank of England. Did any one ever hear the notion uttered,
that the sovereigns throughout England strengthened the re-
serve of the Bank of England? Why should the notes do so
any the more, or the gold which is held in close pawn for those
notes, fast out of the reach of the whole court of directors?
Those who use such language have not learned the meaning of
the Act of 1844, They are still unaware of the fact that the
Issue Department, the automaton, is nothing else in the world
but a factory for the making and selling of bank-notes — a purely
private establishment, as private and separate as the shop of any
tradesman in the City; and that the cash in its till has no more to
do with the equally private firm of the Bank of England than the
sovereigns which lie in the purses of gentlemen going about the
streets. The gold of the automaton is a part of its stock-in-trade, —
for in truth it deals in both ways, selling gold as well as notes, —
and whether that stock is large or small is no one's concern but
its own. If it is too large, there is a waste incurred by compelling
the automaton to sentence a large treasure to annihilation; and
if it is reduced to a proper size, — to a million, as we contend, —
the automaton will only have profited by the intelligence of the
age, and reduced its useless store, as tradesmen nowadays, by
the favour of railways, no longer keep the same amount of stock
in their shops. All these are private affairs; nothing more.

There is also another delusion, closely akin to the former,
which invests gold with a mysterious and peculiar importance;
which distinguishes it from all other commodities by some quali-
ties too mystical to be intelligibly described ; which conceives
it to be the duty of all prudent and paternal governments to

The Bank Charter Act. 427

make legislative provision for a constant supply of this magical
article ; and which, contemplating with infinite complacency and
self-gratulation the eight millions which, undisturbed and un-
ruffled, are ever incubating over some prodigy going to be born
in the dark cellars of Threadneedle Street, points to the sacred
treasure as the pledge of commercial safety. Dreams of the
imagination, which the breath of the morning air at once dispels.
What virtue can reside in a metal which no man can control or
see? Gold is but one out of thousands of commodities subject
to the same laws, obeying the same influence, bought, sold, and
exchanged by precisely the same rules as all its companions.
Food sustains life, clothing shelters it, comforts give it enjoy-
ment, humbler metals minister to its necessities ; but what can
luckless sovereigns and unworked bullion accomplish, except serve
as tools for passing property from one man's possession to an-
other's ? And if they are not engaged in this office, of what
use are they to mortals ? But, even if it were otherwise, — if
gold, like food and clothing, w ere consumed, — why should go-
vernments, above all an English government, take thought for
its supply ? Why should the universal law^ of supply and de-
mand be supposed to have lost its efficacy in the case of this one
metal ? Is iron less useful, less valuable ? Yet what theorist has
prescribed the piling-up of warehouses with unemployed hard-
Avare ? The dread of too feeble a supply of gold is shipwrecked
against a fact so palpable that not an authority has dared to
deny it — the fact that foreign countries, normal^, are always in-
debted to England, or, in other words, that the value of our ex-
ported manufactures exceeds the value of the foreign raw mate-
rials of which they are composed. And if this is so, — as it
incontestably is, — does it not irresistibly follow that the normal
problem for England is not how to gel gold, but how to get rid
of it ? This everlasting craving for hoards, which are turned to
no profitable use ; this gloating over reserves, which science and ex-
perience and common sense alike condemn; this fatuous revival of
the mercantile theory in all its preposterousness, — is the shame of
our age. If eight millions are needed for cashing notes presented
for payment, let us have them, — they are usefully employed in
sustaining a paper circulation ; but if one million is enough, —
if one million will do the work as thoroughly, as safely, as per-
manently as eight, in the name of common intelligence let science
say so to the trembling spirits of the City, and let it bid them
turn the idle into reproductive capital, for the benefit of the
nation. Their own automaton might have taught them better
things. Had it a voice to speak with, it would summon them to
carry away ingots which no man had touched for twenty years,
and which their own laws compel it to keep from all the world.
Another merit is claimed for the law of 18 M by these eminent

428 The Bmik Charter Act.

philosophers, — fortunately, without the slightest foundation for it
in the law itself; for otherwise it would not be the good law
which it is on so many points. It regulates the circulation,
they tell us, making money cheaper or dearer as the circulation
expands or is contracted, and thereby steadies prices, checks
speculation, and furnishes a solid basis for the calculations of
the trader. Sovereigns and bank-notes alone form " the circu-
lation,'^ and thus bank-notes and sovereigns alone ought to be
cared for as the regulators of prices. Again are we lifted into
the world of fiction and unreality. Where have these great
oracles learned that coin and bank-notes alone constitute the
currency of England ? Nay, what is their idea of a currency
and its functions ? Manifestly to them currency is something
more than instruments of exchange; for such a definition at
once places cheques, bills, and book- credit on a level with the
sovereign and the note, for the work of all is identical in nature,
with modifications to suit requirements of detail, just as a chisel
is fitted for cleaving and a plane for smoothing wood. And as
the work is the same, so the diminution of one kind of these
instruments only leads to an increase of the others. If bank-
notes are made fewer by the withdrawal of gold from the
automaton for exportation, nay, if they were extinguished alto-
gether, the only effect would be to compel the public to use
more cheques, bills, and book- credit. But this view does not
content the authorities. They have assigned a specific and ad-
ditional effect to coin and notes, and they glory in the Act of
1844, not only as ensuring the safety and convertibility of the
public cheque, — a merit it is clearly entitled to, — but also as
protecting an agent which peculiarly acts on prices, and thereby
specially deserves the attention of the legislator. When notes
and sovereigns are abundant, prices, we are assured, are inclined
to rise ; when they are deficient, the value of all commodities
begins to droop, and thus the doctor is enabled to discern the
remedy for controlling speculation by lowering the markets,
through a diminution of the circulation. A gratuitous and un-
founded theory. In the first place, the law of 1844 does not
and cannot act in the manner supposed ; the automaton does not
control the circulation at all, but is' itself controlled by the pub-
lic, whether speculators or others, who take as many or as few
notes as they please. If, therefore, the doctrine were true, it
would be destroyed by the very law that was enacted to give it
effect. But, in the second place, those who suppose currency to
act on prices are entirely ignorant of the natural ebb and flow of
the currency. On this point there seems to be a strange misap-
prehension even amongst the ablest writers. We are not aware of
a single person having perceived what appears to us to be a very
obvious truth, — that, there being only a fimited use and demand

The Bank Charter Jet.

429

for gold within the country, the inevitable destination of all im-
ports which are not intended for immediate reexportation is the
vaults of the Issue Department. Vouchers are given for it in
the form of bank-notes ; and these notes^ being equally incapable
of being absorbed by the public, gravitate, by a similar process,
through the various banks to the common reservoir of the reserve
of the banking department — that is, of the Bank of England. This
bullion and these notes are purely inoperative; they are waiting
in idleness till they can be consumed, the bullion by being sent
abroad, the notes by being cancelled. They are simply an excess
of stock, like a glut of timber or corn in the docks, for which
the owners have received warrants from the dock company. Such
being the fact, it is plain that the cellar of the automaton is
merely a safe and convenient place in which to store away the
gold till it is wanted ; and that the notes which are issued as
receipts for it, supervening upon an amount already sufficient for
the public wants, as all the witnesses agree, cannot be kept out
in circulation, but play simply the part of title-deeds or vouchers.
This simple explanation shows at a glance the emptiness of the
speculations which have been so prodigally lavished on the fluc-
tuations of the automaton's reserve. These fluctuations indicate
solely the movements to and fro of the trade in gold; and as
gold is almost always flowing into England from the balance of
trade, the reserve, for the most part, stands at a figure far above
the minimum necessary for the single purpose of securing the
convertibility of the bank-note.

But in truth all this commotion about gold and notes, these
special investigations in times of commercial difficulty into the
state of these instruments of exchange, as if they contained the
secret of a standing or falling City, are singularly absurd. Look
at the following statement, we say to students of currency;
make use of your common sense ; and then ask yourselves whe-
ther this passionate excitement about the condition of the bul-
lion and the bank-notes is not supremely ludicrous. This state-
ment was laid before the Committee of the House of Commons
in 1858 by Mr. Slater, of the firm of Morrison, Dillon, and Co.,
and gives an account of the receipts and payments of that house
in the year 1856.

Receipts.

Bankers' drafts and bills payable after date

Cheques ....

Country bankers' notes

Bank of England notes

Gold

Silver and copper
Post Office orders

£533,596
357,715
9,207
G8,554
28,089
9,333
1,48G

.£1,007,980

430 The Bank Charter Act.

Payments.

Bills payable after date £302,674

Cheques 663,672

Bank of England notes 22,743

Gold 9,427

Silver and copper 1,484

£1,000,000 f^M
It appears from this document that, in the payment of a millioh
sterling, notes and coin together were employed to the extent of
only 33,654/. Who does not see, after this, the utterly insigni-
ficant part which the public currency of the realm plays in the
great transactions of business; that gold and notes form but
the small change, the pocket-money, as it were, of trade; that
the mighty instruments by which commercial exchanges are
effected are the bill, and, above all, the cheque; and that the
passionate attention given to notes, the vehement anxiety about
the mass of their reserve, are practical and scientific absurdities?
The bill and the cheque do the work, and take care of them-
selves; the Bank of England note is petted and fondled; it is
raised to the highest elevation of dignity ; men are never happy
unless it is enthroned on unemployed and unemployable mil-
lions ; but it does not, and never will, from its very nature, do
the great work of effecting exchanges. This, to be rightly under-
stood, is enough to dispel most of the delusions about currency.

One delusion more, the greatest and most astounding of all,
we must notice ; and then we shall cease to trouble the patience
of our readers. It is the grand discovery of the authorities, the
central principle of their view of a paper cm-rency, the scientific
achievement on which they pride themselves, the splendid merit
which they claim for the Act of 1844. The assertion is so over-
whelming, that we must guard against every possibility of mis-
take. We never met yet a man who, when told of it for the first
time, could believe that Lord Overstone or his associates could
have made such a declaration, so we quote the ipsissima verba
of Lord Overstone himself. " By this means,*' he said on the
7th of July, 1857, to the Select Committee of the House of
Commons, "by means of the Act of 1844, effectual security is
obtained that the amount of paper money in the country shall at
all times conform to what would be the amount of a metallic cir-
culation. Of this there can be no doubt. The paper money of
the country, under the Act of 1844, conforms strictly in amount
and consequent value to a metallic circulation ; those fluctuations
in amount, and those only, which would occur under a purely me-
tallic circulation, can and will occur under our present mixed
circulation of gold and paper, as regulated by the Act of 1844."

A paper currency identical, not in value only, but in amount.

The Bank Charter Act. 4S1

in tlie numbers of pounds circulating, with a circulation of coin, —
and this erected into the primary principle of currency, of which
there can be no doubt ! Egregious nonsense ; those are the only
terms to apply to it. Lord Overstone was long a banker. Had
a bookworm in Grub Street uttered such language, it might have
caused no surprise ; but that such incredible absurdities should
have come from a practical dealer in money is marvellous indeed.
We ourselves, as v.'e write of it, can scarcely believe that such a
thing could ever have been said. The desire to be scientific ex-
tinguished the common sense of this great banker. Let him
consult Jones Loyd and Co., and ask what they would do if
Bank of England notes were suppressed ; let him enquire whe-
ther they would use as many sovereigns in their business as
they now use notes, sovereigns for notes, pound for pound. Let
him imagine the stir in the banking-house, when the morning-
clerks had to be sent out to collect the sums due to the firm. A
small portfolio and a trustworthy clerk gathered, and brought
home, thousands — possibly hundreds of thousands ; but what was
to be done with those dreadful sovereigns? Who was to cany
them ? a porter or a cab ? If a cab, two clerks must go ; for
one must stay on guard whilst the other stepped into some house
to receive a fresh payment. And then the weighings across the
counter, the time lost, the risk of robbery — the sight of the bul-
lion-bags as they were shot into the cab ! Does Lord Overstone
imagine that Jones Loyd and Co., or any banking-house or
mercantile firm in the City, would stand this for three days?
Is it not obvious that fresh appeals would be made to that
mightiest of instruments, the cheque ? that sovereigns would
be eschewed by every man of business? that the disappear-
ance of the bank-note would scarcely have enlarged the use
of coin, but that the cheque, the despised and unprotected
cheque — the cheque which no bullion renders safe, for which no
grand Act of Parliament rears a costly foundation of metal —
would dominate sole and all-powerful in the City ? And then,
the confusion and perplexity in every household ! The gentleman
who loved to carry a score or two of pounds in his pocket —
what was he to do with all this weight ? The fine lady on her
shopping rounds in Bond Street, how was she to pay for her
purchases ? What could help her but the cheque ? More buy-
ers on credit, less purchasers with ready money, more banking
and more cheques. The cheque-book, for hourly use, would
become the inseparable companion of ladies and gentlemen
alike. The supposition is too ridiculous to pursue it farther. If
people imagine that there are no such forces as the laws of
gravity — if they fancy that the public, for the very same pur-
poses, will use a very heavy commodity to the same extent that

4S2 The Bank Charter Jet,

they would a light one, — words would be wasted in the attempt
to convert them.

Some may think that we have pressed too heavily on the
absurdities of these currency oracles : we plead not guilty to the
charge. The mischief, both theoretical and practical, which these
pompous authorities work in matters of currency is incalculal)le.
They have rendered it the most repulsive of subjects for the stu-
dent ; and their dogmatism inflicts very heavy losses of money
on the country. Many men, as our own experience has amply
sliown, relying solely on their common sense, have discerned with
ease the main principles of cun;ency. They have then passed
over to the utterances of great bankers and grandiloquent writers;
they have been assured that these were eminent authorities, pos-
sessed of transcendent knowledge and experience; they have
found the instincts of their own good sense contemptuously
thrust aside as ignorant and shallow ; but they have found also
the language of the great men to be unintelligible jargon ; and,
turning away in disgust, they have resolved never to read a line
more on currency in their lives. Such is the melancholy state
to which currency has been reduced by the most uninductive and
unanalytical writing which has weighed down any science since
the days of astrology.

We are well aware also that our proposal to raise the limit
of bank-notes issued on the deposit of Consols or other securities
to twenty millions, and to return to the wholesome and scientific
one-pound note, will be received with simple disdain. We are
willing to bear it ; for we know that victory in the end always
belongs to truth, and that our opponents are unable to oppose
us with any reasonings which will bear examination. The Bank
Act of ISit, their own very child, will at last work out their
overthrow. It needs only to be understood. When the public
has learned thoroughly to grasp the fact that the Issue Depart-
ment, the automaton, has no connection with trade or the Bank
of England ; that its one sole object, its only act, is to secure the
credit and convertibility of the bank-note; and that almost all
the gold destined to protect that convertibility is never touched
for generations ; so wanton and vast a waste and loss as eight
millions of pounds kept for a work which one alone is fully able
to perform, will cease to be tolerated by the public opinion both
of the City and of all England.

B. P.

[ 433 ]

THE PKOGKESS OF CHEMICAL SCIENCE.

The history of every science is marked by a succession of epochs
of change in theoretical views, produced by the accumulation of
facts for which existing theories afford an inadequate explanation.
When a new theory is proposed, the labours of scientific men are
appHed to clear up exceptions to its laws, to confirm its deductions,
and to extend it to new and uncultivated branches of the science.
There is no time as yet to see its defects : and so, when it has been
once generally adopted, there is at first an unqualified faith in it ;
the teaching of schools becomes so dogmatical that the majority of
students who happen to be educated immediately after its general
adoption hardly ever change their opinions afterwards. Gradually,
however, as some unexpected facts come to light, scepticism begins
to show itself ; partial modifications of the theory are suggested ;
the germs of new ones burst forth, leading to animated controversy,
and stimulating to new enquiries. This is the period of the greatest
activity and progress of a science ; for the collision of rival hypo-
theses produces the sparks from which most discoveries emanate.
At length the old theory gives way, and a new one is installed in its
place, to be in turn dethroned by another. Let it not be forgotten,
however, that each successive theory is in reality but a transforma-
tion, so to say, of the preceding one, and always brings us nearer to
the goal which all science leads to, — a clearer insight into the laws
of the universe, and a greater power of adapting them to our pur-
poses.

In chemistry we are just now emerging from this strife of
opposing hypotheses ; the old theories are becoming obsolete,
and the foundations of a new one are being laid. And that new
one will not be a theory to explain and connect chemical pheno-
mena, m the usual restricted sense of the word, but will be a gene-
ral theory of matter and motion ; for the chemist, following in the
track of the astronomer, no longer confines himself to the study of
terrestrial matter, but boldly speculates upon that of the sun, and
even of the stellar worlds. It seems a fitting moment, then, to trace
the successive phases of opinion which have prepared the way for
the advent of the new theory.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the old Greek
elements, fire, air, earth, and water, were still believed in ; but the
alchemists had added three others, sulphur, mercury, and salt.
These must not be looked upon as the substances we now know
by those names, but as the elements of the Peripatetics, the types of
certain general properties. By sulphur the alchemists understood
the property of changeability, of destruction ; mercury embodied

434- The Progress of Chemical Science.

the idea of iindecomposability, the cause of metalHc lustre, ductility,
in a word, of metalleity ; while salt typified fixity. These were the
metal-forming elements, the difference between the metals being
due to the proportions and degree of purity of the elements.
Hence it was evident that metals might be transmuted into each
other. These elemental types bear evidence of the influence of
metaphysical ideas upon the conceptions of physical phenomena.
This influence is further illustrated by the gi'owth of a complete
system of chemical ontology ; thus sweetness was attributed to a
distinct sweet principle, bitterness to a bitter principle, aromas to
an aromatic principle. The elixir of life, the alchahest, or universal
solvent, the spiritus mundi, which people sought for in the dew
of the month of May, and in the products of the distillation of
frogs and lizards, was only a further development of this onto-
logy. Such terms as elective affinity, magnetic, electric, caloric
and lummous fluids, vital principle, prove that its influence has
long lingered in physical science, though now passed, or passing,
away for ever.

For this multiplicity of principles, the German physician,
Becher, or rather his more celebrated disciple Stahl, substi-
tuted a single general principle, by the combinations of which
with bodies all their metamorphoses were sought to be explained.
This principle was the matter of fire, which, according to Stahl,
could exist both free and combined. When bodies contained it
combined, they were combustible. This combined or fixed caloric
he called phlogiston, from (p\6^, flame. When set free from
bodies it assumes its common properties of heat and light. Com-
bustion of bodies was therefore a decomposition into phlogiston
and some other substance which varied with the nature of the com-
bustible. The richer a body was in phlogiston, the more com-
bustible it was. When metals were heated, they lost their bright-
ness and were converted into an earthy dross or calx ; metals were
compounds of different calxes with phlogiston, and the process of
calcination was therefore a separation of phlogiston. Wlien these
calxes were heated with such combustible bodies as oil or charcoal,
the metals were revived, that is, they combined again with phlo-
giston, which they borrowed from the combustibles.

The discoveiy by Bayen that the calx or oxide of mercury on
being heated yielded metallic mercury and a gas, and the splendid
discoveiy of all the properties of this gas (oxygen) by Priestley, and
almost simultaneously by Scheele, Dr. Rutheiford's discovery of
nitrogen, Black's discovery of carbonic acid. Cavendish's memorable
.synthesis of water, and Lavoisier's discovery of the composition of
air, enabled Lavoisier hunself completely to overturn the jihlogiston
theory, and to give a simple explanation of the oxidation and reduc-
tion of metals, and of the formation of many acids, — such as sul-

The Progress of Chemical Science, 455

phuric, carbonic, and phosphoric acids, — of combustion, of respira-
tion, and decay. . The calxes of metals, according to him, were com-
binations of metals with oxygen ; therefore all earths were oxides,
and would yield metals, if only the oxygen could be separated. An
attempt to realise this prediction of Lavoisier during his lifetime
was made by Tondi and Ruprecht, who, about the year 1790, tried
to separate the metals of barytes, magnesia, and some other earths.
It seems that the bodies they obtained were only alloys of iron, so
that the true metals of the alkalies and earths were imknown before
the memorable experiments of Sir Humphrey Davy.

At first sight the difierence between Stahl's view of combustion
and Lavoisier's may not seem so great a discovery as it really was ;
but, in truth, there is a wide chasm between the chemical science
of the first part of the eighteenth century and that established by
Lavoisier. The very language was revolutionised ; not the mere
nomenclature of chemical bodies only, but the descriptions of
processes and the explanation of phenomena. The wonderful
light which was shed over all the experimental sciences by the
views of Lavoisier may be pointed to as an example of the value
of theoretical views, apart from the discovery of mere facts.

Chemical research necessarily follows two distinct directions —
one, the analysis and synthesis of bodies, their transformation when
subjected to the action of reagents, and their mutual relationships ;
the other, the investigation of the causes of the phenomena, that is,
of the forces which are engaged in chemical processes. The former
prepares materials for the latter ; and it is from the progress in the
second direction that we attain to a theory of causation. Lavoisier
did not, strictly speaking, propose a theory. He merely described
facts without attempting to explain them ; but he did so clearly and
logically, and therefore prepared the way for a theory. Hence he may
be said to have followed the first of the two directions we have just
mentioned. But among his fellow-labourers and contemporaries
there were some who pursued the second path of research. In 1 775,
the Swedish chemist Bergmann j3ublished his essay on elective at-
tractions, in which he laid it down as a principle that all bodies
which have the power of combining with each other do so in virtue
of an affinity which is strictly elective, and that the force of this at-
traction is constant and definite, and capable of numerical determi-
nation. He attempted to express this affinity in the case of bases and
acids by constructing a series of tables, which, though very incorrect,
must always have a historical value, as the first systematic attempt
to introduce number into chemistry. Two years after the publica-
tion of Bergmann's book appeared a very remarkable work of a
German chemist, Wenzel, upon the same subject. This work con-
tained the capital discovery that many salts, when mixed toge-
ther in certain proportions, completely decompose each other;

VOL. IV. 9 9

436 TJie Progress of Chemical Science.

while if there be an excess of one or the other salt in the solution,
that excess will remain without aflPecting the result. The author
further observed that if the salts were neutral to test-paper before
being mixed, the neutrality was not affected by the result. In these
experiments we have two important numerical laws, since known
as the laws of definite and reciprocal proportion, that is, the doctrine
of equivalents. Wenzel's analyses can scarcely be surpassed at the
present day for accuracy. This subject was further extended by
the labours of another German chemist, Richter, whose chief work,
in four volumes, appeared between 1792 and 1794. His analyses
are by no means as accurate as those of Wenzel ; but his tables may
be considered the prototypes of the later tables of equivalents.

This subject of afiinity occupied the attention of many other
chemists also, and among them of the Frenchman Berthollet, whose
celebrated work Essai de Statique Chimique appeared in 1803.
In this book, Berthollet made an attempt to lay the basis of a
general theory of chemical science, by considering that the mole-
cular attraction which produces chemical combination is but a mo-
dification of the universal law of gravitation. He considered com-
binations and decompositions to be the result, not of affinity, as
Bergman n thought, but of an effort to attain a state of equilibrium
under the varying influences of external circumstances, such as
density, insolubility, volatility, and the relative masses of bodies.
He believed that bodies are capable of uniting with each other in all
proportions, and that the definite composition which we find them
to possess is the resultant of the different forces engaged in each
reaction. This idea appears to be a necessary consequence of any
mechanical theory of chemistry ; the speculation was, however, too
far in advance of observation and experiment in BerthoUet's time
to admit of being properly interpreted. It will hereafter be found
that the chemical statics foreshadowed the true dynamical theory
of molecular forces ; and the work will ever be looked upon as one
of the most remarkable contributions to chemistry. As the theory
of indefinite chemical combination could not be interpreted and
harmonised with the facts of the science at that time, in the form
in which it was put forward by Berthollet it was erroneous, and led
to a controversy with Proust, who maintained the opposite opinion
with great ability. This controversy was useful to science, and
undoubtedly directed general attention to the phenomena of com-
bination and decomposition, and paved the way for the discovery
of the laws which govern those phenomena.

The study of crystalline forms, which from the commencement
of the eighteenth century began to attract attention, revived to
some extent the old corpuscular theory of the Greeks. Newton
speaks of the ultimate particles as being hard and impenetrable.
Leeuwenhoeck tells us that a cube of common salt is formed by the

The Progress of Chemical Science, 437

union of an infinity of smaller cubes. Buffon, following out tto
idea, concluded that it could not be doubted that " the primitive
and constitutional parts of this salt are also cubes so small that
they will always escape our eyes and even our imaginations." Eom^
de risle, who may be said to have laid the first foundation of crys-
tallography by the establishment of the important laws of the
invariability of the angles of the crystals of the same substance,
no matter how unequally the development of the faces which
fonn the angle may have taken place (a law first indicated by
Gulielmini), and that every face of crystal has a similar one
parallel to it, has the following remarkable passage in the se-
cond edition of his CristaUographie : " Germs being inadmissible
to explain the formation of crystals, we must necessarily suppose
that the integrant or similar molecules of bodies have each,
according to the nature which is proper to it, a constant figure
determined by the figure of the constituent principles themselves
of those same molecules."^ To every substance then he assigned a
special form, determined by the integrant molecules, which he called
the primitive form, and from which he derived all the secondary
forms which the same substance could assume, by supposing that
the angles and edges were truncated. Haiiy, the contemporary of
Kome de PIsle, established the law which governs those trunca-
tions and modifications, and which is known as his law of sym-
metry.2 This law may be briefly expressed thus : If any angle or
edge of a crystal be removed by a truncation, or modified in any
other way, all the similar edges and angles will be similarly modi-
fied, and all the dissimilar parts will not be so modified, or will be
modified differently. When the faces or edges which form the
modified part are equal, the modifications produce the same effect
on the form of the crystal ; in the contrary case, they produce a
different effect.

Even with a very limited number of simple types of form, the
number of possible new or derivative forms, which this process of
tnmcating the edges and angles could give, would be almost end-
less. But there is a very beautiful natural law which is a necessary
consequence of Haliy's theory of crystals, and limits the number of
truncations which could occur on the crystalline form of each sub-
stance. If we take a square bar or rod of wood, it will represent
what we should in crystallography call a right square prism. Let
the four end edges of one end of this be cut so as to make the end
terminate in a little pyramid. Now such a pyramid may be made
elongated or shortened, that is, we may point our bar with a long
sharp four-sided point, dr we may make it quite stumpy. It is
quite clear that between the shortest and the most elongated

^ Crystallographie, 2d ed. torn. i. p. 22 ; Pari?, 1783.

' Essai dune Theorie sur la Structure des Cnataux : Paris, 1784.

438 The Progress of Chemical Science.

ends we could suppose an almost infinite number of ends. Let us
make the longest or most pointed end we can, and saw it off, so as
to have a complete four-sided pyramid. Then let us make a,
series of such pyramids, each succeeding one being more obtuse
than the preceding one. The number, it is clear, would be limited
only by our skill in marking the successive degrees of stumpiness.
If we place these pyramids on a table in the order in which we cut
them off, we shall have a series which will decrease in height from
the sharpest to the bluntest. There are crystals of the shape of
this bar, sometimes terminated by pyramids, but more frequently
having only the edges cut off or truncated, presenting, in fact, the
appearance of the first cut on the edges of the wooden bar ; these
rudimentary faces may be completed in imagination by supposing
them to be extended until they would form a point. Instead,
however, of the endless series of points which we could cut on the
bar, nature only produces a very limited number on the crystal of
each substance. But the height of all those pyramids which actually
occur, or may be completed in imagination on a particular crystal-
line form, would present a remarkable relationship. If we select
the height of one of them as a unit of measure, the heights of the
others will be one and a half, twice, three times, four times, &c. the
unit, or one-fourth, one-third, one-half, three-quarters, &c. of it;
that is, the heights would be simple multiples or submultiples of
one of them. This beautiful law applies to all possible figures,
and we may consequently express it in general terms, thus : the
parameters of all the faces which occur upon the forms in which
a body crystallises, that is, so much of the half axes of a crystal as
these faces cut, or may cut, if sufficiently prolonged, imless when
the face is parallel to one or more of the axes, bear to each other
the simple ratios above mentioned.

An idea that such a law governed the weights in which bodies
combined seems to have suggested itself to the minds of several
chemists. Among others, we find it actually assumed by William
HigginS; in discussing the composition of sulphurous and sulphuric
acid, in a work of great ability, published in 1789 in defence of the
views of Lavoisier, which, we believe, he was the first to adopt in
Great Britain.^ Higgins does not seem to have been himself con-
scious of the value of the ideas which floated through his mind,
and no one else appears to have noticed them. Proust at a later
period, in his controversy with Berthollet, almost touched it. It
remained, however, for John Dalton to see the law in all its gene-
rality. By connecting them with the ancient Greek corpuscular
theory, he was able to reduce all the laws which govern the pro-
portions in which bodies combine together by weight to the sim-

3 A Comparative View of the Phlogistic and Antiphlogistic Theories; London,
1789.

The Progress of Chemical Science, W9

plest expression. Nothing can exceed in simplicity and beauty
these four laws, which may be thus stated : 1. all bodies combine
in definite proportions, and the same body is always composed of
the same constituents, miited in the same proportions ; 2. sub-
stances may combine in several proportions, and if one of those be
taken as unity, the others bear the simple relations to them of
1 to 1, 1 to 2, &c. ; 3. if certain weights of two bodies combine
Tvitli a given weight of a third, they will combine with one another
in the same proportion, or in a multiple or submultiple of it ;
4. the sum of the weights of the constituents of a compound body
represents the proportion in which that compound would itself
combine with another body. The first, or law of definite proportion,
was, as we have already seen, enunciated by Bergmann and Wenzel ;
the second corresponds with the law of symmetry of Haiiy, and
thus links weight and form ; the third is Wenzel's law of equi-
valents; and the fourth, which is the direct consequence of the
others, could only have arisen by the correlation of the others.

Aided by the experiments of Wollaston and Thomson, but
above all by Berzelius, the atomic theory was generally accepted.
To the last-named chemist the world is indebted for the table of
equivalents of the simple bodies, one of the noblest monuments of
skill, labour, and perseverance of which any science can boast.

If bodies combine together in multiple proportions, and if the
geometrical forms in which solid bodies crystallise are developed
according to an analogous law of growth, it must necessarily follow
that there must be some relation between the volume or space oc-
cupied by the gases or vapours of substances and the proportional
weights according to which they combine. This relationship was
discovered by Gay Lussac, who found that, when gases combined,
the volumes of the combining gases and of the gas produced bore
a very simple relation to each other, of 1 to 1, 1 to 2, and so on ;
and that the law of multiple proportion by weight applied also
to combinations by volumes ; that is, that there was a distinct con-
nection between the weights of bodies and their volume, or, in
other words, their specific gravities might be determined from
their combining numbers.

It is weU known that the same quantity of heat does not pro-
duce the same heating effect as measured by the thermometer
upon different bodies ; thus the quantity of heat which would
elevate a given weight of water 3° would elevate a similar mass of
mercury 83°. If we agree to represent the unknown quantity of
heat which would raise a given quantity of water 1° by unity, it
is obvious that the relative amounts of heat required for heating
equal weights of water and mercury would be as 1 to l-28th, and
these numbers would represent what are called their specific heats.
If instead of equal weights of the two bodies we compare quanti-

440 The Progress of Chemical Science.

ties proportional to their atomic weights, we find that the specific
heats are practically equal This curious discovery regarding the
specific heats of the simple bodies was made by Dulong and Petit.
Neumaim and Avogadro subsequently extended it to some com-
pounds, that is, they found that similar compounds had nearly the
same specific heats. But it is to ]\I. Regnault that we are indebted
for the most complete and extensive investigations on this im-
portant subject, by which the perturbations to which the law is
subject were determined.

Boyle and Mariotte long ago, in studying the effects of pressure
upon air, recognised the existence of a law which, as expressed by
the latter, is, that the volume of a gas is directly as the pressure,
and the elasticity or spring which it opposes to compression inversely
as that pressure ; that is, that if we double the pressure on a gas,
we reduce its volume to half, and double its elasticity. This law
was now applied to each gas as it was discovered ; but it was so6n
found that very few followed it absolutely. We shall return again
to the subject of these deviations. Another law of gases intimately
connected with the law of specific heat and the law of Mariotte, is
Gay Lussac's law of the expansion of gases. He found that equal
volumes of different gases expanded equally with equal increments
of heat.

If the same force, whether mechanical or of heat, when applied
to different gases caused their molecules to approach or recede an
equal distance from each other, it was natural to suppose that under
similar conditions the molecules of gases were equally separate from
each other, and consequently equal volumes of the simple gases
contained an equal number of atoms. The latter hyi^othesis, how-
ever, introduced a distinction between equivalent — that is, the
smallest quantity of a body which appeared to take part in the
reaction by which bodies were formed or decomposed — and atom, or
the smallest particle of matter which could not be further divided.
An equivalent of chlorine and one of hydrogen occupy equal volumes,
and consequently their specific graAdties are directly proportional
to their equivalents ; that is, if we make the unit of comparison
for both equivalents and specific gravity 1 of hydrogen, the equi
valent and specific gravity will be the same. But an equivalent of
oxygen taken as 8 occupies only half the volume of that of chlorine
or hydrogen. Again, the volume of sulphur is only one-sixth of
that of hydrogen, and consequently only one-third that of oxygen.
Some of the other elements also were anomalous, but it did not ex-
tend to their compounds; and so chemists were enabled to assume
a theoretical volume for sulphur, and for some others, coiresponding
to the volumes they appeared to enter into combination witL The
simple bodies capable of being converted i»to gases accordingly
arranged themselves under two categories — those the volume of

The Progress of Chemical Science, 441

whose equivalent was equal to that of oxygen taken as unity, and
those whose equivalent occupied the space of that of hydrogen,
or 2. There were two ways of equalising this difference, so as to
make the symbols in a formula express equal volumes. One was to
halve the received proportional numbers of the two-volume bodies,
and to caU the halves atomic weights, so that some bodies would
be always assumed to combine in two atoms, that is, two atoms
would represent their equivalent ; while in the case of oxygen and
the other one-volume gases, the atomic weight and equivalent would
be the same. The second method would have been to double the equi-
valent of the oxygen class, so as to make the proportional numbers
of all the simple bodies correspond to equal volumes. The former
method was adopted by Berzelius and the majority of chemists for
a considerable time ; the second method, with some exceptions which
will be noticed hereafter, is now preferred. If we consider water to
be composed of one equivalent of oxygen and one of hydrogen, its
formula would be HO ; if we look upon it as formed of two atoms
of hydrogen and one of oxygen, we should write it HgO, the 0
representing 8 if we assume the atomic weight of hydrogen to be
half its proportional number. If, on the other hand, we make the
atomic weight of hydrogen the same as its proportional number,
and make the proportional numbers of oxygen and hydrogen re-
present equal volumes, 0 will be 16 as is now assumed.

The relation between the density and the volume of gases sug-
gested the importance of endeavouring to establish a similar con-
nection between the density and volume of liquids and solids. The
first who attempted it was M. Dumas; but tbe chemist who has
laboured most at this difficult and somewhat barren task is Professor
Kopp. Some of the specific volumes obtained for bodies which
resemble each other in constitution a,re remarkable for simplicity.
This subject will be the foundation of the new chemistry. Specific
volume naturally leads us to consider the law of specific form, or
the relation between the shape and composition of solid bodies.
Starting from an observation of Gay Lussac, that potash and am-
monia alums can mingle in all proportions, without the forms being
altered, and that even the same crystal of alum may be alternately
put into solutions of the two salts and still continue to grow
without undergoing any perceptible modification, Mitscherlich
established the law that salts, and in general compounds which
have the same atomic formulae, may crystallise and mingle in all
proportions in the crystal obtained, without the latter being modified
in its fundamental form, although the angles undergo a slight
alteration in their value. This identity of form and faculty of
substitution is common to all classes of bodies, simple and com-
pound, and was called by its discoverer isomorphism. Bodies were
said to be isomorphic when they could crystallise in the same way,

442 The Progress of Chemical Science,

stand as substitutes for each other without changing the general
character of the product, and be considered to have the same num-
ber of atoms united in the same manner.

While these remarkable laws, which connected in so beautiful
a manner the weight, volume, and form of different kinds of matter
on the one hand, and the relation of heat to all three on the other,
were being investigated, the science was making gigantic strides
in the other direction. The determination of the equivalents of
bodies by Berzelius totally changed the character of chemical ana-
lysis ; hundreds of new compounds were discovered annually, many
by Berzelius himself, in the course of his experiments for the deter-
mination of equivalents. The combinations of the simple bodies
with oxygen, sulphur, and chlorine were especially examined, and
careful analyses of the salts which those compounds mutually formed
were made, while the introduction of symbolic nomenclature, also
by Berzelius, enabled chemists to express with great facility the
composition of bodies, and their views regarding the reactions which
take place when different substances are brought together. The
materials for framing a general theory to explain chemical phe-
nomena were at length accumulated, and the task was undertaken
by the man whose gigantic labour had gathered a large part of
those materials. Before briefly explaining what that theory was,
we must say a few words upon another fundamental point of con-
nection, which had been previously established between chemical
and physical phenomena.

While Lavoisier and his contemporaries were forming a new
science, Galvani, a professor of Bologna, made the memorable dis-
covery that, when the lumbar nerve and the muscle of the thigh
of a frog are brought into contact by means of a metallic arch, the
muscle contracts. He attributed this phenomenon to an excita-
tion produced by an electric discharge ; he looked upon the muscle
as a kind of Leyden jar, charged on the inside with positive elec-
tricity, and on the outside with negative electricity, the nerve and
metallic arch acting simply as conductors. Although many of
the theoretical views of Galvani have been shown to be erroneous,
his experiments have been amply confirmed ; and we now know
that the action of the muscles is accompanied by the development
of electricity. So curious an observation could not fail to attract
considerable attention at a time when the minds of scientific men
were excited by the almost daily announcement of some important
discovery. Galvani's experiments were repeated, and found to be
correct ; but his explanations were disputed by several, especially
by Volta, the professor of physics at Pavia. He endeavoured to
show that the cause of the phenomenon was in the metalUc arch,
and not in the animal organism. In endeavoming to establish
this theory, he discovered dynamical electricity, and the instru-

TJie Progress of Chemical Science, As^

ment by which it is produced — the voltaic pile or battery — un-
questionably the most beautiful and important physical instrument
yet discovered. We need not stop to discuss his theory of its
action ; suffice it to say that a voltaic element consists essentially
of two substances which combine chemically, and of a conductor.
In practice we generally use sulphuric acid and zinc as the che-
mical agents, and platinum, copper, or even charcoal, as the con-
ductor. With this new instrument Mr. Carlisle and Mr. Nicholson
succeeded, in 1800, in decomposing water and getting both consti-
tuents free, at opposite poles of the battery, as if each was in a
different state of electricity. Water being an oxide of hydrogen,
could not dynamical electricity decompose other oxides too, and
separate the constituents in a corresponding electro-polar con-
dition ? Sir Humphrey Davy, by means of a very powerful voltaic
battery, fomid that this was so, — that the decomposition of water
was in fact a type of all electro-chemical decompositions ; that is,
that the elements were separated, like those of water, at opposite
poles, and therefore in opposite states of electricity. On sub-
mitting potash and soda to the action of his powerful battery, he
had the satisfaction to find that they decomposed into new metals,
with properties totally unlike any of the metals known previously,
and oxygen ; thus fully verifying the prediction of Lavoisier, that
the earths generally were combinations of metals. These dis-
coveries of Davy were not only important in themselves as a con-
tribution to the chemical knowledge of matter, but they also
formed the starting-point of that brilliant series of discoveries
with which the name of Faraday especially will be for ever asso-
ciated ; and lastly, they may be said to have been the origin of
the electro-chemical theory.

It is not necessary here to describe this theory in any detail ;
it will be sufficient to state its general principles as it finally left
the hands of Berzelius. Its fundamental principle was, that elec-
tricity is the cause of all chemical activity, the source of the heat
and fight observed in chemical reactions ; the latter forces being,
perhaps, but transformations of the electricity. Matter was sup-
posed to consist of finite atoms which were electrically polar, the
poles of each atom not being of equal strength ; according as one
or other pole was stronger, the atoms are electro-positive or electro-
negative. Combination consists in the juxtaposition of those
atoms ; all bodies that have a chemical relationship to each other
assume, when they come in contact, opposite electrical states, the
intensity of which is in proportion to their chemical relationship,
that is, to their special nature, since in the electro-chemical theory
an original difference of matter was assumed. If the mechanical
contact passes into chemical affinity, the opposite electricities of
the atoms more or less neutralise each other, and the signs of

444 Tlie Progress of Chemical Science.

electrical excitation more or less cease. When the compound thus
formed is subjected to the action of a voltaic battery, the atoms
again become electrically excited and separate, and are attracted
by the poles in an opposite state from themselves. When two
atoms combine they form a compound atom, which is mechanically,
though not chemically, indivisible. As the strength of the che-
mical affinity of bodies depends not so much upon the difference
between the relative force of the poles of each atom as in general
upon the intensity of the polarisation, which varies, however, with
the temperature and other physical circumstances, and as this
variation is not equal under like circumstances for all bodies, it
rarely happens that the electricities of two atoms are completely
neutralised by combination. According as the negative or positive
electricity is in excess, so the compound will be either positive or
negative. Two compound atoms may thus be able to form a still
more complex mechanically indivisible atom, and so on. There
were therefore simple atoms, complex atoms of the first degree,
complex atoms of the second degree, and so on. All combinations
taking place in virtue of electrical dualism, each class of atoms
was divided into electro-negative bodies and electro-positive bodies.
Among the simple substances, oxygen, sulphur, chlorine, &c. repre-
sent the electro-negative elements, and the metals the positive ones ;
the complex atoms of the first degree, or oxides, sulphides, &c.,
formed by the union of an electro-negative body and an electro-
positive one, form two series likewise, an electro-positive and electro-
negative one, the former being bases and the latter acids, which by
their union produce salts ; while two salts may unite to form double
salts, one of which may be supposed to be electro-negative to the
other. From what we have stated with regard to the variation of
electrical intensity in the same atoms, it will be evident that in
many cases the same body may be electro-negative or positive
according to circumstances. We have said that salts are atoms of
the second degree formed by two complex atoms of the first de-
gree. Berzelius called these salts amphid salts ; they included all
the salts of oxygen and sulphur acids, with oxygen and sulphiu*
bases. In the atoms of the first degree formed by chlorine, bromine,
and the other elements of what is called the halogen group, the
electro-polar intensities of their simple atoms so nearly balance
each other, that they are nearly or entirely neutral. Accordingly
Berzelius called them halogen salts.

This theory afforded explanations generally satisfactory of most
of the phenomena of chemistry known at the time, including the
laws of combination by weight and volume, electro-chemical de-
composition, isomorphism, and even BerthoUet's laws of chemical
reactions, and was accordingly accepted by all chemists as a satis-
factory theory of causation.

The Progress of Chemical Science, 445

At the time when the great laws of which we have attempted
to sketch a brief history were discovered, the chemistry of organic
bodies, — that is, of the materials and products of plants and ani-
mals,— formed part of that nnoccupied territory of which there is
much in every new science, and into which only a few bold pio-
neers occasionally venture. Pourcroy, the greatest of the public
teachers of Paris at the beginning of the present century, and
fellow-labourer with Vauquelin, one of the founders of analytical
chemistry, tells us, in his System of Chemistry, that the analysis
of a vegetable may be very accurately made by separating some
twenty substances. Until the true nature of the simple bodies,
oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon, was determined, nothing
of course could be known of the ultimate composition of organic
bodies. We may say the same of the proximate composition, that
is, of the different compound bodies of which the organs of plants
and animals are made up ; as the proximate compounds can only
be accurately defined by making their ultimate analysis, that is,
by determinmg the proportion of the different elements of which
they are formed.

Lavoisier considered that in every acid there was an acidifiable
base, to which Guyton de Morveau aj)plied the term radical,
united to the acidifiable principle oxygen. Scheele had discovered
that when sugar is boiled with nitric acid it is converted into
an acid ; which he proved to be identical with one existing natu-
rally in many plants. Lavoisier looked upon sugar as such a
radical, and oxalic acid as an oxide of it. Some time before 1817
Berzelius had observed a certain similarity between organic and
inorganic compounds of oxygen ; as, for instance, in the power of
the former to combine, like the latter, with oxygen in several, and
often multiple, proportions. Appljdng the principles of tlie-ekc-tro-
chemical theory to the compounds, he concluded that they too
should be looked upon as oxides. In the second Swedish edition
of his Chemistry, he tells us, that " the difference between organic
and inorganic bodies consists herein, that in inorganic nature all
oxidised bodies have a simple radical ; while all organic substances,
on the other hand, are made up of oxides with compound radicals."
He looked upon inorganic bodies as the types of organic ones, but
only in the sense that, whatever knowledge we may ever attain to
about the composition and mode of formation of organic bodies,
would come from the application of the ideas and methods of
inorganic chemistry. He does not appear to have thought that
our knowledge of organic chemistry would ever be very extensive ;
for he believed that the same laws did not govern organic and
inorganic combination, as the following passage in the last edition
of his Chemistry will show : "In living nature the elements appear
to obey quite different laws from those of inorganic nature ; the

446 The Progress of Chemical Science,

products which result from the reciprocal action of these elements
differ therefore from those which inorganic nature presents. If we
could find out the cause of this difference, we should have the key
of the theory of organic chemistry ; but this theory is so concealed
that we have no hope whatever of discovering it, at least for the
present/'

Berzelius's idea that organic bodies were compounds of radi-
cals led to no immediate practical results ; but Gay Lussac having
shown that alcohol might be looked upon as a combination of one
volume of the carbide of hydrogen olefiant gas and one of the vapour
of water, and ether of two volumes of olefiant gas and one of
the vapour of water, the view was adopted and extended by Dumas
and Boullay in connection with their investigation upon the com-
pound ethers. They concluded that olefiant gas, or, as they called
it, etherine (C3HJ, plays the part of a strong base, and saturates
acids like ammonia ; that alcohol and ether are hydrates, and the
compound ethers salts of it. The analogy in composition, so far
as formulse went, of etherine and ammonia, was certainly very
considerable. The etherine theory was the first attempt to connect
a number of bodies by a common link, and historically therefore
is of great importance.

In 1832 Liebig and Wohler discovered that a group of mole-
cules represented by the formula C7H5O could perform the func-
tions of a simple body, and be transferred unchanged during a
number of reactions in which it was obtained in combination with
oxygen, chlorine, bromine, iodine, sulphur, &c. To this group,
which they did not succeed in isolating from its combinations, they
gave the name of benzoyle. Berzelius at once adopted the con-
clusions of the chemists just named, and extended them, in oppo-
sition to the etherine theory, to ether and alcohol, by proposing to
consider the former of those bodies as the oxide of a hypothetical
group, or radical CgH^. Liebig in turn adopted this view of the
constitution of ether, and called the radical ethyle ; and having
established, by his investigations upon the acid formed by sul-
phuric acid and alcohol called sulphovinic acid, the inadequacy of
the etherine theory, he extended the radical theory to all com-
pounds whose metamorphoses and derivatives had been sufiiciently
examined ; that is, he considered organic bodies as compounds, in
accordance with the electro-chemical theory, of groups of atoms
performing the functions of simple bodies.

After an impulse had been given to the daily accumulating
observations of organic chemistry by the methods of analysis in-
troduced by Gay Lussac and Th^nard, greatly simplified by Liebig,
enlarged by Dumas's accurate method of determining nitrogen, the
want of some general principle to link them together was so keenly
felt, that the theory was at once accepted with general favour, until

The Progress of Chemical Science. ^ 447

an observation of Gay Lussac afforded the germ of totally different
ideas. He found that when wax is acted upon by chlorine, chlor-
hydric acid is formed ; that is, hydrogen is removed, while at the
same time an equal volume of chlorine enters the wax. Dumas,
following up this clue, found that eight volumes of hydrogen could
be removed from oil of turpentine, and eight volumes of chlorine
substituted for them. Pursuing his experiments, he came to the
conclusion, that by the action of chlorine, bromine, iodine, organic
bodies lost hydrogen, and took an equivalent quantity of the re-
agent. To this class of reactions the terms metalepsie and substi-
tution were applied.

Laurent extended the examples of substitution by a series of
remarkable investigations ; and, connecting the phenomena with
the etherine theory, he constructed an extremely ingenious hypo-
thesis known as the nucleus theory. In each organic compound
he assumed a nucleus ; the simplest nuclei, unlike the radicals, are
carbides of hydrogen, which can be got in a free state. These fun-
damental nuclei he considered as geometrical figures formed of
carbon and hydrogen atoms. Around these nuclei he supposed
other atoms, elementary or complex, to be capable of grouping
themselves without disturbing the equilibrium of the nucleus.
These deposited atoms could be removed or replaced by others ;
every addition, removal, or replacement altering the physical and
chemical properties of the body formed. Neutral oxides were
formed by the addition of one atom of oxygen, monobasic acids
by the addition of two atoms, and so on. So far the etherine
theory. Let us now see the part substitution played in his system.
Both the radical and etherine theories admit that hydrogen could
exist in two states in a compound, and substitution had demon-
strated that it was so ; if it was admitted in the case of hydrogen,
there was no reason why it should not be admitted in the case of
all the elements ; there was nothing improbable therefore in the
distinction between the nucleus and the atoms deposited upon it.
Laurent supposed that the hydrogen of the nucleus might be re-
moved in part or wholly, and its place occupied by chlorine, bro-
mine, iodine, &c., and even by oxygen, sulphur, and several com-
pounds. So long as the atoms removed were replaced by equivalent
quantities of others, the group remained constant in its general
chemical functions, its physical properties, such as density, boiling
pomt, &c., changing of course with each atom substituted ; but
then the changes thus produced would be regular, and might be
predicted to some extent. When a substitution was effected in
the fundamental or primitive nucleus, it was called a derivative
nucleus, so that there were as many derivative nuclei as possible
substitutions in the fundamental one. As each derivative nucleus
could be the centre of a series of combinations outside it, in the

448 The Progress of Chemical Science,

same manner as the primitive one, the number of possible chemical
compounds became enormous. This system presented for the first
time a means of systematically classifying all organic bodies, of
indicating their possible affinities, of predicting or anticipating
many of the compounds that might be obtained in certain re-
actions, and even of predetermining to some extent their physical
properties and chemical functions. Its advantages as the basis
of a classification are shown by its having been adopted for that
purpose by Leopold Gmelin in the last edition of his Chemistry.

The researches and views of Laurent, the investigation by Eeg-
nault of the changes which take place by the continued action of
chlorine upon olefiant gas, and still more the discovery of chloro-
acetic acid, or acetic acid, in which three-fourths of the hydrogen
have been substituted by chlorine, by Dumas, led that chemist to
reject altogether the electro-chemical theory, and propose in its
place his theory of types. "When an organic body was treated with
chlorine, bromine, &c., so as to remove hydrogen and replace it
by an equivalent quantity of the reagent, the body was supposed
to have maintained its type, and the substituting element or com-
pound, no matter what might be its electro-polar character, occu-
pied the place, and performed the functions of the replaced element.
If the substitution took place without altering the chemical func-
tions of the original body, both it and the derivative were said to
belong to the same chemical type ; but if the substitution was
accompanied by a definite change in chemical functions, the two
bodies would be said to belong to the same mechanical or mole-
cular type. Dumas extended his views to inorganic chemistry
also ; and looking upon isomorphism as the indication of similar
molecular constitution, he considered isomorphic gToups contain-
ing the same number of molecules as types, such, for instance,
as the alums. We have seen that Berzelius looked upon the laws
of inorganic compounds as the starting-point of investigations into
organic compounds. Dumas, on the contrary, declared at a very
early period that he had " the firm conviction that the future pro-
gress of general chemistry would be due to the application of the
laws observed in organic chemistry." And he said farther that,
''far from confininor ourselves to take the laws of inoroanic che-
mistry and introduce them into organic chemistry," he thought
that " one day, and very soon perhaps, organic chemistry would
give laws to mineral chemistry.'' In the electro-chemical theory
the nature of the molecules governed the phenomena, and con-
sequently i\iQ\v position in a compound depended upon tlieir nature.
When Berzelius makes inorganic chemistry the type upon which
he supposes the organic bodies to be formed, he evidently believes
that, even in the multitude of compounds which carbon forms with
two or three elements, the nature of the atoms is still the cause of

The Progress of Chemical Science. 449

all differences of property. The type theory, which, properly speak-
ing, is not a theory in the same sense as the electro- chemical,
bemg but an expression of facts without any attempt to explain
the causes, evidently implies that the properties of bodies are the
result of the position rather than of the nature of the elements of
which they are composed. This is the fundamental distinction
which exists between the two directions in which chemical spe-
culations have tended for nearly thirty years.

According to the views of Berzelius, a radical was an un-
changeable atomic group ; while it was wholly opposed to the
fundamental principles of the electro-chemical theory to suppose
that so electro-negative an atom as chlorine could perform the
same functions in a group as hydrogen. He could not therefore
accept the doctrine of substitution without giving up his own views.
A warm controversy began between the advocates of the radical
and types theories, the former endeavouring to account for the facts
discovered by the latter by a mere sliifting of formulae. The mass
of new facts which were brought forward on both sides in the course
of this discussion profoundly modified both views. In the first place,
it became evident that although the supposed radicals could be
transferred unchanged in a series of double decompositions, just
in the same manner as a simple body, they could not be considered
as fixed and unchangeable groups. They were in fact nothing
more than residues, or the parts of groups, which remained un-
affected in a series of double decompositions. As the same com-
pound could break up in many different ways, we could assume as
many radicals in the same substance as there would be residues
unaffected in all its possible double decompositions. There was no
reason, therefore, to select some particular one of those residues,
and consider it the radical of a series of compounds, except for the
superior advantage which it might present for classification, by
being the residue most frequently left in the more usual reactions.
On the other hand, the successive substitution of chlorine and
other bodies for hydrogen diminished its basyle power, and the
substitution of acid residues even converted it into an acid.
Chlorine and those acid radicals, although taking the place of
hydrogen, did not therefore, strictly speaking, perform exactly the
same function. This mutual modification of the rival hypotheses
led to the development of a new type theory, which also admits of
the hypothesis of compound radicals, but only in the sense of resi-
<lues ; while the types themselves are only to be looked upon as
convenient arrangements of formulcie for grouping together bodies
which in double decompositions appear to react according to a
common type. This new theory, although developed under the in-
fluence of perfectly independent ideas, harmonises so beautifully
with the new views on the nature of force, that it may be said to

450 The Progress of Chemical Science.

have prepared chemistry for being inckided at once in the general
d3mamical theory of natural phenomena, which is now for the first
time slowly unfolding itself to our minds. Before briefly describing
this new view, it may be well to say a word upon the different
ideas out of the convergence of which with those of the radical
and first type theory it arose. We will not follow a strictly his-
torical order, since to do so, however desirable, would be incom-
patible with our space.

Sir Humphrey Davy thought that the oxygen acids of chlorine
might be considered as chlorhydric acid to which oxygen was suc-
cessively added, and consequently that the amphid salts of those
acids might be assimilated to the chlorides of the metals. Dulong
adopted this view, and extended it to all acids ; that is, he taught
that all acids are compounds of hydrogen with an electro-negative
body, which is either a simple or compound radical. Liebig suc-
cessfully applied this hypothesis to the organic acids, and greatly
extended the idea of acid by defining it to be a hydrogen compound
whose hydrogen could be displaced by a metal, — a definition which
includes not only water, but even hydrates of the alkalies ; Gra-
ham having shown that the different kinds of phosphates might be
explained by supposing that there were three distinct phosphoric
acids, distinguished by the amount of water which they contained.
Thus the acid with one equivalent of water formed salts with only
one equivalent of base ; that with two of water formed salts with
two of base ; and lastly, that with three of water gave salts with
three of base. He called these acids monobasic, bibasic, and tri-
basic respectively. Upon the hypothesis that acids were hydrogen
compounds, monobasic phosphoric acid would be supposed to con-
tain one equivalent of hydrogen displaceable by a metal, and the
tribasic three. Liebig found that a large number of organic acids
belonged to the class of polybasic acids. One of the most charac-
teristic distinctions of such acids is their faculty of forming several
classes of salts, according to the amount of hydrogen which they
contain. Thus we may form a salt with a tribasic acid by replac-
ing one of hydrogen by one of metal ; another by replacing two of
hydrogen by two of metal ; and a third by replacing the whole of
the hydrogen by three equivalents of metal.

This fertile hypothesis of the constitution of acids was rendered
more definite by Laurent and Gerhardt, who established several
important characteristic distinctions between the acids of different
degrees of basicity. Thus they found that a monobasic acid never
gives an acid silver salt by double decomposition, that it only
forms one ammonia salt, one silver salt, one neutral ether, and one
amide, that is, a substance formed from the ammonia salt by
the loss of water ; bibasic acids give two ethers, — one neutral
and the other acid, — two amides,— one neutral and the other

The Progress of Chemical Science, 4j5l

;i monobasic acid ; and so on. Clilorliydric acid is analogous to
monobasic oxygen acids in tlie indivisibility of its hydrogen ;
water and sulphide of hydrogen, on the other hand, present striking
analogy to bibasic acids in admitting of their hydrogen being
ilivided. Besides organic radicals, almost every metal forms two
oxides — a hydrated one, which may be compared to the acid salt of
a bibasic acid, the anhydrous oxide — and also two corresponding
sulphides. Led by this analogy, Laurent and Gerhardt doubled
the equivalent of water, and consequently of sulphide of hydrogen
and of the simple bodies oxygen and sulphur ; a proceeding justified
already, as we have seen, by the convenience of making the equiva-
lents of the simple bodies represent as far as possible equal volumes.
On comparing the fornmlaj of organic compoimds, the chemists
just named observed that in nearly all of them the number of
oxygen, sulphur, and carbon atoms, in supposing them to represent
the old equivalents, and not the double ones just spoken of, was
even ; while the sum of the hydrogen and chlorine atoms, or other
body supposed to substitute hydrogen, was always divisible by two.
They argued that this could not be an accident, but must be due to
the elements themselves ; hence they thought that the formulae of
.substances which were exceptions to this rule should be doubled,
so as to make them accord with it. Here was another reason for
doubling the eqiuvaleiit of water. When this change was made in
the formulgc, it was noticed that the volume of nearly all organic
compounds in the state of vapour was double that of hydrogen ;
and, further, that nearly all volatile inorganic bodies had the same
volume. If the specific gravity of all simple bodies, the volume of
whose equivalent w^as equal to that of hydrogen, was the same as
their proportional number when hydrogen was adopted as a com-
mon standard for both, it was evident that the specific gravity —
compared to hydrogen — of the vapour of any compound which
followed the rule we have just stated, should be equal to half its
equivalent, no matter how many atoms it might contain.

The classical experiments of Chevreul on fats and oils, and the
subsequent ones of Redtenbacher, Laurent, and others, had made
known a immber of organic acids, consisting of carbon, hydrogen,
and oxygen. Dumas, on coordinating them, observed not only that
they all contained the same amount of oxygen united to different
proportions of carbon and hydrogen, but also that those different
proportions were multiples of C2H2, or if we double the equivalent
of carbon, as is now done, of CHo. Gerhardt saw at once the evi-
dent relation of this observation to the rule of atomic pairs above
mentioned, and he was led to classify organic compounds into
similar series, the members of each of which should have the
same chemical function, the same quantity of oxygen, &c., while
their carbon and hydi-ogen should differ by CHo, or a simple
VOL. IV. h h

453 The Progress of Chemical Science,

multiple of it. Of course the carbides of hydrogen containing
no oxygen could be arranged in similar series. He called those
series homologous. He ftirther observed that when the bodies
forming a homologous series are subjected to the same reaction,
they yield analogous products, which, when the reaction is simple,
are homologous to one another. On putting the formulae of a
number of such kindred homologous series arranged into columns
side by side, so that the corresponding bodies containing the same
amount of carbon may be in the same horizontal line, another re-
lationship becomes apparent ; the corresponding bodies will differ
from each other by multiples of Ho. This relationship is termed
isology. The classification of bodies into homologous series effected
a revolution in chemistry, for it brought together bodies between
which no one had suspected any relationship to exist. A third
kind of series, called a heterologous series, may be supposed to
consist of bodies containing the same radical, to which one or more
equivalents of oxygen, sulphur, &c. are successively added. Hetero-
logy applies to inorganic as well as to organic bodies ; but homo-
logy and isology belong exclusively to the compounds of carbon,
though Mr. Sterry Hunt suspects that the former may be obseiTcd
in certain mineral types. From the isomorphic and other ana-
logies of silicon and carbon this is to be expected.

Among the many substances which the proximate analysis of
plants brought to light were certain crystalline compounds con-
taining nitrogen, which have the property of forming salts with
acids, such as morphia, quinia, &c. Berzelius looked upon those
bodies to be what he called conjugate compounds of ammonia, with
different radicals containing carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. In
conjugate compounds the associated bodies were supposed to un-
dergo very little modification by being joined together, and the am-
monia was therefore considered to exist as such in the natural
bases. Liebig, on the other hand, considered that they were deri-
vatives of ammonia, formed by the separation of hydrogen either
as chlorhydric acid, water, &c., from ammonia by the action of
electro-negative chlorides, or of oxides, &c., and the substitution of
NHo ; or, in other words, that they were organic bodies of the same
type as the ammonia salts of copper, zinc, mercury, &c., called by
Sir R Kane amides, and therefore quite analogous to oxamide — a
body obtained by Dumas in heating the neutral oxalate of am-
monia so as to remove from it the elements of water. This in-
genious suggestion was the starting-point of the disco veiy of an
almost innumerable number of compounds, although the view of
Liebig has been somewhat modified. The production of aniline, as
the first example of this class of bodies directly produced, deserves
to be specially noticed. Fritsche, by distilling indigo with hydrate
of potash, obtamed a basic oil to which he gave the name aniline.

The Progress of Chemical Science, 4S8

When the light part of coal-tar naphtha, which consists in great
part of a carbo-hydrogen called benzine, is acted upon by strong nitric
acid, a dense oil, having the odour of oil of bitter almonds, and known
as nitro-benzid, is obtained ; it is a substitutive compound in which
one equivalent of the hydrogen is replaced by NO^. When the
oxygen compounds of nitrogen are acted upon by sulphide of hydro-
gen, their oxygen is converted into water and their nitrogen into
ammonia, while sulphur is precipitated. Professor Zinin imagined
that the same reaction ought to take place upon the nitrogen com-
pound in the nitro-benzid ; and if so, tlie ammonia formed would
remain in the compound instead of the hydrogen originally dis-
placed. The experiment succeeded, and he obtained an oily basic
substance, which Professor Hofmann proved to be identical with
aniline, and with a basic body which had been obtained from tar.
Immense quantities of aniline are now made by this process for
the purpose of preparing other bases from it, which yield the rich
purple, crimson, and other dyes now so largely used.

The mode of formation of aniline just given is quite in accord-
ance with Liebig's view, for we may suppose one equivalent of the
hydrogen of benzine to be replaced by NHo. But the bases ob-
tained by M. Wurtz, containing the radicals of common alcohol and
its homologues, lead to the view that those bases are ammonia, in
which one equivalent of hydrogen is displaced by the radicals in
question. As the hydrogen of ammonia can be divided into three
parts, we ought to be able to get three different bases, according
as we substitute one, two, or three equivalents of the hydrogen ;
and this was done by Prof Hofmann, who has pursued this subject
of organic bases with such rare patience, perseverance, and skill,
that he has created a whole department of chemistry.

When alcohol is moderately heated mth sulphuric acid it yields
ether : the usual explanation given of this process was, that sul-
phuric acid separated water from the alcohol, and consequently
that alcohol was a hydrate of ether, which in turn was an oxide of
ethyle. Alcohol and ether, therefore, bore to each other the same
relation as hydrate of potash and anhydrous oxide of potassium.
Although the process of etherification consisted essentially in the
separation of water, still there was a difficulty in explaining it.
Professor Williamson resolved the difficulty, by proving that, when
sulphuric acid, which is bibasic, and alcohol come together, a
double decomposition takes place, by which the radical of one
equivalent of alcohol CoH. exchanges place with one equivalent of
the hydrogen of the acid, by which the alcohol becomes water and
the acid sulphovinic acid, that is, an acid salt of ethyle ; when this
acid salt comes in contact with another equivalent of alcohol, an-
other exchange takes place, one equivalent of the hydrogen of the
alcohol exchanges place with the ethyle of the acid salt, by which

454 The Progress of Chemical Science.

the latter becomes sulphuric acid and the alcohol ether. Ether
has coiisequeiitly a formula double of that usually assigned to it.
Alcoliol may, therefore, be supposed to be derived from water in
which one equivalent of its hydrogen (for, from what we have said
already about the analogy of water to bibasic acids, we shall always
speak henceforth of water mtli an equivalent double that formerly
assumed) is substituted by one of ethyle, and ether from one of
water in which the two equivalents of hydrogen are replaced by
two of ethyle. Hydrate of potash corresponds to alcohol, and
anhydrous oxide of potassium to ether. As in other bibasic acids,
we ought to be able to substitute for the two equivalents of hydro-
gen in water two different metals ; and this we can do, for if
hydrate of jiotash be heated with zinc, the second equivalent of
liydrogen is driven out, and zinc takes its place. An analogous
compound to this would be an ether containing two distinct radi-
cals ; a class of compounds of which Professor Williamson pre-
pared several examples, thereby furnishing a comjDlete test of the
constitution of ether.

If hydrous and anhydrous oxides, alcohol and ether, are consti-
tuted upon the type of water, so must acids be also ; and if so,
the anhydrous acid, or, as it is now called, the anhydride, must
bear the same relation to the acid properly so called as anhy-
drous oxide of potassium does to the hydrous oxide, and as ether
does to alcohol ; and we ought to be able to get mixed anhy-
drides corresponding to Williamson's mixed ether, that is, an-
hydrides with two distinct radicals, which, by combining with one
equivalent of water, ought to split into two distinct acids. Here,
again, experiment confirmed theory ; for not only did Gerhardt
succeed in getting the anhydrides of a number of acids by processes
which fully tested the theory, but he also produced a number of
mixed anhydrides.

Gerhardt generalised these views of the relations of acids, bases,
alcohols, and ethers to water, by proposing to represent all the
reactions of bodies, inorganic as well as organic, by four types of
double decomposition.

I. For chlorides, bromides, iodides, fluorides, cyanides, he se-
lected as the type chlorhydric acid HCl. If in this type we sub-
stitute the hydrogen by aU the metals successively we get the
protochlorides of the metals. On the other hand, if we substitute
the chlorme by bromine, iodine, &c., we get the corresponding
bromides, iodides, &c.

XL The type water tt(0 includes: 1. hydrous basyle and

chlorous oxides, sulphides, selenides, and tellurides, organic as weU
as inorganic, — that is to say, hydrous metallic oxides, alcohols,
organic and inorganic acids, and acid salts of polybasic acids, inclu-

-N, and includes all the

The Progress of Chemical Science. 455

sive of vinic acids, or acids in whicli the whole of their displace-
able hydrogen is not substituted by metals ; 2. anhydrous oxides,
sulphides, selenides, and tellurides, includin.o- basyle anhydrides, or
oxides, sulphides, &c., which are derived from water by the sub-
stitution of all the hydrogen, and which form salts with acids,
with the formation of one or more equivalents of water, or sul-
phide of hydrogen, &c., according as they are oxides or sulphides,
kc. ; simple and mixed ethers, or anhydrides formed by the sub-
stitution of two molecules of the same or diiferent alcohol radicals,
or an alcohol radical and a metal ; compound ethers, or ethers
containing both a basyle and chlorous, — that is, acid, radical ; and
lastly, amphid, basic, and neutral salts, or compounds in which
the hydrogen of water is replaced by a metal and by a chlorous or
acid radical.

H

III. The thii-d type is ammonia H

H

derivatives of ammonia formed by the substitution of part or the
whole of the hydrogens by metals, alcohol, and acid radicals, and
even by the metallic radical H^N, or ammonium. Some of the
derivatives of this type may be acids ; for if we substitute acid
radicals for the hydrogen, as Gerhardt did, we get neutral or acid
bodies according to the extent to which the substitution is carried.

IV. The fourth type, hydrogen HH, represents the simple
bodies and the compound radicals, which are of two kinds : first,
those composed of two atoms of the same radical ; and secondly,
those composed of atoms of different radicals. When one of the
atoms is hydrogen and another an acid radical, we have the bodies
caUed aldehydes, of which common aldehyde is an example.

Each of those types is supposed to represent a volume of vapour
double that of hydrogen ; consequently the hydrogen type is made
to consist not of one atom of hydrogen, but of two. Now this is
not an arbitraiy proceeding for the purpose of equalising the vo-
lumes, but appears to be really founded upon the properties of free
elements. It has, in fact, been found that whenever chlorine, bro-
mine, iodine, &c., act upon organic bodies, two equivalents always
take part in the reaction, and two of hydrogen are always eli-
minated. This circumstance has led chemists to the conclusion
that the simple bodies in their free state are compounds ; for in-
stance, that the radical hydrogen when in combination is not the
free gas, but that the latter is a combination of hydrogen with
hydrogen, free chlorine is a chloride of chlorine, &c. Indeed, in
the case of the alcohol radicals, this may be considered to have
been proved experimentally. Professor Kolbe and Professor Frank-
land, by decomposing ethers with a voltaic battery, obtained what
they considered to be the free radicals ; these bodies represent in

456 The Progress of Chemical Science,

reality two atoms, as has been proved by decomposing the mixed
ethers, when mixed radicals ai^ produced. It is right to remark
that this view of sim2)le bodies follows also as a necessary con-
sequence from the electro-chemical theory. Moreover, it introduces
a distinction between atom, molecule, and equivalent. An atom is
the smallest quantity of a body that can exist in combination ; a
molecule is the smallest quantity which exists free ; and an equi-
valent is the relative quantity of a body which displaces another.
Experiment shows us that all bodies do not displace each other
atom for atom. Many of the metals, chlorine and the other
halogens, and many organic radicals replace each other and hydro-
gen atom for atom, and may hence be called monatomic. Oxygen,
sulphm", seleniimi, and several radicals always act in the ratio of
1 to 2 of hyckogen or other monatomic body, and may therefore
be called biatomic. One atom of nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic,
antimony, bismuth, &c. represents three of hydrogen ; while car-
bon, silicon, boron, titanium, tin, and some others appear to be
tetratoniic. This idea of polyatomic radicals and molecules, which
appears to have first suggested itself to Professor Williamson as
an explanation of bibasic acids, has completed the new theory of
types. It enables us to connect our four types, and to reduce them
to their simplest expression — miity. The type chlorhydric acid,
water, or ammonia, does not imply one equivalent only of those
bodies, but may include multiples of them ; so that we may assume
a body to be formed on the type of the chlorides, but derived from
two or more equivalents of the type, which are as it were rivetted
together by a polyatomic radical removing the hydrogen. In this
way we may derive bichlorides, terchlorides, &c. from two, three,
or more equivalents of chlorhydric acid, deutoxides, and teroxides,
from two and three equivalents of water ; and so on. Again, we
may suppose the fundamental type of aU types to be one or
more molecules of hydrogen. If we substitute one atom of hydi'o-
gen in a single molecule by one atom of chlorine, we have the
chlorhydric acid type ; and as both are monatomic, the volume of
the type occupies the sum of the volume of its constituents. Next,
if we suppose two atoms of hydrogen to be replaced in two mole-
cules of hydrogen by one of the biatomic radical oxygen, we get
the type water ; two molecules of hydi'ogen represent eight volumes,
but when the biatomic atom replaces fom' volumes, the compound
contracts to four volumes. Again, if in three molecules or twelve
volumes of hydrogen we suppose the triatomic radical nitrogen to
replace three atoms or six volumes of hydrogen, we have the type
ammonia, which likewise shrinks to four volumes ; and so on. In
this way the type chlorhydric. acid has the same volume as the
molecule from which it may be supposed to be derived, the type
water only hal^ and ammonia one-third.

The Progress of Chemical Science, 457

We owe to Hofmann, Wnrtz, and Bertlielot chiefly, the experi-
mental extension of the doctrine of polyatomic radicals — the first
in introducing them into ammonia ; the second by the discovery of
glycols, that is, alcohols whicH are to common alcohol what bibasic
acids are to monobasic acids ; and the third by the establishment
of triatomic and higher alcohols. A monatomic alcohol, such as
common alcohol, by losing two atoms of hydrogen forms an alde-
hyde ; and the latter by taking up one equivalent of oxygen be-
comes a monobasic acid. Again, the radical can successively dis-
place one, two, three, or fom' equivalents of hydrogen in ammonium,
and form four distinct bases. We can get the alcohol to form com-
binations with all acids giving rise to bodies known as compound
ethers ; and lastly we can get chlorides, bromides, &c. of the radical.
But we have not finished yet. Besides ammonia, there are the sub-
stances phosphamine, arsamine, and stibamine, or ammonia in which
phosphorus, arsenic, and antimony respectively replace the nitro-
gen ; in each of these the alcohol radical can successively displace
one, two, three, or four equivalents of hydrogen, and form peculiar
bodies. From one alcohol, therefore, we may get several thousands
of compoimcls belonging to each of the four types. With a bi-
atomic alcohol we can get corresponding bodies ; but it can act
as if it consisted really of two distinct monatomic atoms, which can
simultaneously imdergo the same reaction, or two distinct and
separate reactions, each atom being altered in a special manner.
For instance, both may unite -svith an acid, or with another alcohol,
or one only may do so, while the other oxidises or loses hydrogen
and changes its functions, and yet both remain united after the
separate changes. All this happens with a triatomic, a hexatomic,
or a higher alcohol only, though in these cases we have to deal with
three, six, or more alcohols, which may act together ; or one may
act and the others remain inactive ; or two, three, four, or five
may act together or separately, the remainder being inactive. For
example, if we take a hexatomic alcohol, we may combine one, two,
three, or four equivalents of it with one of ammonia, by which the
combining power of the ammonia would be extinguished, but the
combuiing power of the alcohols would only be partially extin-
guished, so that we may then commence upon the compound as if
it were a twenty-atomic alcohol. We need not proceed farther in
this play of atoms. Wliat we have said will suffice to show how
boundless a field is open to chemical industry for the manufacture
of new bodies. We are tempted, however, to quote from M. Ber-
thelot a passage which will give a better idea than mere figures
can do of the extraordinary number of compounds which theoreti-
cally are possible jQrom the combination of all the known acids set
down at a minimum of one thousand with a single hexatomic
alcohol, without taking into account aU the other compounds we

458 The Progress of Chemical Science,

noticed above. *' Suppose," lie says, " that we were to inscribe the
names of these bodies in a series of volumes ; suppose that each
name occupied a line, each page 100 lines, and each volume 1000
pages, each would contain 100,000 names. If we then take these
volumes to range them in order in libraries, the size of which
should be equal to that of the Imperial Libraiy, each of these
libraries would contain about 1,000,000 of these books. Well,
then, it would take 14,000 such libraries to contain, not the de-
scription, but the names alone of the bodies of which I speak. The
edifices destined to contain this list alone would cover a space
almost as large as Paris."*

With each advance in theory the mioccupied territory of che-
mistry had diminished; so that, after the introduction of Ger-
hardt's classification according to homologous series, only a very
small area was without the pale of a chemical constitution. Unfor-
tunately, however, that area included the most important part of
the subject ; for nothing whatever was known of the true nature
of the compounds of which the organs of plants and animals are
formed. These unclassed bodies, as they were known in 1854,
M. Berthelot divides into six categories, which, somewhat modi-
fied, we may enumerate as follows : 1. neutral fat bodies, or oils,
butters, and solid fats of plants and animals ; 2. neutral saccharine
bodies, represented by carbon united to the elements of water,
such as cane, grape, and milk sugars ; 3. other neutral principles,
some soluble and some insoluble, composed likewise of carbon
united to the elements of water, cellulose, and other substances
constituting the framework of plants, starch, gums, dextrine, &c. ;
4. neutral principles, consisting of carbon and the elements of
water, but containing a slight excess of hydrogen or of oxygen,
such as mannite, glycerine, &c. ; 5. a number of bodies, the majority
of which crystallise, and which, under the influence of acids and
other reagents, split into some kind of sugar and other bodies, such
as salicine, amygdaline, tannins, certain colouring matters ; and (i.
the quaternary albumenoid bodies, such as albumen, fibrin, &c.

The first class of bodies was the subject of Chevreul's masterly
investigations, by which he showed how organic substances were
to be examined. M. Berthelot had succeeded in performing the
converse of Chevreul's experiments,- — that is, he had effected their
synthesis by combining glycerine or fat sugar with the oily acids ;
and in doing so he had shown that glycerine could form three
successive compounds with each acid, for he did not confine his
synthesis to fat acids alone, but obtained compounds analogous to
fats with almost any acid, and, among others, with phosphoric
acid, a compound which M. Pelouze had already recognised in tlie
brain. M. Wurtz having suggested tliat glycerine was a triatomic
■• Sur les Principes Sucris— Lemons de Chimie et de Physique professies en 1862.

The Progress of Chemical Science, 459

alcoliol, the nature of fats was at once determined, — tliey were
ethers. M. Berthelot saw at once that this idea might be extended
to mannite and to the sugars ; and accordingly he attempted to
form with those bodies comi)Ounds analogous to ethers, in which
he was very successful. His synthetical experiments showed him
that mannite and glucose, or grape sugar, were hexatomic alcohols,
while cane sugar is ether. Sugars belong to at least two classes :
1. glucoses, which may be generally represented by the formula
CgH^oOe, such as ordinary glucose of grapes, levulose or left-
handed sugar, galactose or the glucose obtained from sugar of
milk, inosine, a substance existing in animal muscles ; 2. saccha-
roses of the formula CioHooOji, among which may be named sac-
charose or common cane sugar, lactose or sugar of milk. All the
glucoses are hexatomic alcohols ; while the saccharoses are ethers
formed by the union of two glucoses, and the separation of the
elements of water, as in the formation of all ethers. Starches
M. Berthelot considers to have higher formulae than those assigned
to them ; they are at least trisaccharides, formed by the union of
three equivalents of some glucoses, and the elimination of three
equivalents of water. Dextrine is at least a disaccharide. In the
same way, he thinks cellulose, fibrose, vasculose, paracellulose,
the substances of which, the walls of cells, fibres, vessels, and the
medullary columns of plants are formed, are ethers of glucoses,
probably disaccharides ; but we think them much more complex
compounds.

The fifth class of bodies is very extensive, and appears to per-
form important functions in plants. Its history would form a yqij
interesting chapter ; but our space will only allow us to give a few-
instances of the manner in which bodies belonging to it break up,
and a general statement of their composition, viewed in the light
of the theory of polyatomic alcohols. The common tannic acid of
gall-nuts spUts into gallic acid and right-handed grape sugar;
while the tannic acid of the Madura tinctorial or fustic, splits
into glucose and a gallic acid homologous wath true gallic acid ;
they are both trisaccharides. The colouring matter of the Quercus
tinctoria, quercetrin or quercetric acid, splits into glucose and a
yellow crystalline substance called quercetine ; quercetrin is ho-
mologous with a body called phloridzine, found in the bark of the
apple and pear tree, and which splits into glucose and phloretine,
which is homologous with quercetine. In the bark of some species
of willow there is found a white crystalline substance called sali-
cine, which splits into glucose and saligenine ; in the poplar we
have a corresponding substance called populine, which yields glu-
cose, saligenine, and benzoic acid. Salicine is therefore a mono-
saccharide, that is, an ether of the hexatomic alcohol glucose, in
which only one of the atoms is extinguished ; while populine is a

460 The Progress of Chemical Science,

disaccharide which has two of the atoms extinguished by com-
bination with two distinct bodies. To the same class of mixed
compounds belong also amygdaline, a body found in the seeds of
most of the plants belonging to the family to which the plum, the
cherry, the almond, &c. belong, and also in certahi laurels, and
which, in contact with a kind of ferment, also present in the
plants, splits into glucose, oil of bitter almonds, and prussic acid;
and myronate of potash, a salt existing in mustard, which, under
the intiuence of a ferment likewise present in the mustard, splits
into oil of mustard, acid sulphate of potash, and glucose. Oil of
bitter almonds and oil of mustard do not therefore exist ready
formed in the almond and mustard seeds. Another of those curi-
ous sacchaiides is cork, which, so far as we can yet determine,
contains a glucose and one or more fat acids. The cutine or ex-
ternal layer or epidermis of plants appears to be an ammonia
derivative of a saccharide, and therefore a link between the gluco-
sides, as this curious class of bodies which we have included under
the fifth category is called, and the sixth and last category of
bodies unclassed in 1854, about which we shall now say a few
words.

White of Qgg consists chiefly of a body composed of carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, which has the property of coagu-
lating by heat, and is called albumen. The same body, or at all
events a very closely-allied substance, is found in the blood ; while
a second variety occm's in the juices of plants. In the clot of
blood another substance is found, which appears to be identical
with the fibres of muscle, and is hence termed fibrhi. A third
substance occurs extensively in the milk of animals, and under the
name of casein is known as the pure substance of cm-d. These
bodies are so closely related that analysis can scarcely detect any
difference of composition between them, and they may be appa-
rently transformed into each other. We may conveniently name
them from their soluble type albumenoid bodies. Besides those
mentioned, we find in the seeds of plants a number of sub-
stances which apparently belong to this class, and perform an
important function in the germination and florescence of plants.
Perhaps those found in different families of plants are different
bodies. In animals too we find a number of simdar substances
which appear to stand in close connection with the albumenoid
bodies ; such, for instance, as the matter that constitutes the lens
of the eye, mucus, &c. Diastase, emulsin, and all other kinds of
ferments, except those which consist of the mycelium of some
species of fungus, appear to be modifications of some of them.
M. Berthelot has not extended the theory of polyatomic radicals to
those bodies ; and yet there can be no doubt that they too are
derivatives of polyatomic alcohols, apparently ammonia deriva-

The Progress of Chemical Science. 461

lives, and in some eases also more complex ones of the mixed
alcohol and ammonia type.

Cutine, or the epidermal layer of leaves, bulbs, &c. contains only
about 2| per cent of nitrogen ; the chitine of insects, which forms
not only the wing-cases of lepidopterous insects, but also the organic
part of the tegumentary covermg of crabs and other Crustacea, the
scales and hau'S of insects, and the mantle of the oyster, and many
parts of the tissues of the lower animals, such as the trachea and even
a layer of the intestinal canal, has only about 6 1 per cent of nitro-
gen ; chondiin of the tendons and ligaments has 14^ per cent ;
tibrin and albumen have about 15 per cent. We have pointed out
above that cutine is a derivative of a hexatomic alcohol obtained
"vvith ammonia. So long ago as 1845 Professor C. Schmidt of Dor-
pat suggested that chitin contained the elements of a cellulose
and a nitrogenous body, having the composition of the muscles of
insects. There exists in a muscle, as a normal constituent of some
part of the mass, one of the sugar family, called inosite ; and, in-
dependent of the fact that animals secrete as a constituent of milk
a saccharide lactose, or sugar of milk, it is well kno^vn that sugar is
abundantly found in diseases of the lungs, and in several other dis-
eases of the body, sometimes in very considerable quantities. Ac-
cording to Dr. Schunck, the plants which yield indigo contain a
soluble substance to which he gave the name of indican ; when
boiled with strong acid it splits into a particular kind of sugar and
blue indigo. The latter may be looked u]3on as the aldehyde of
another body which is white and soluble. The peculiar sugar of
the indican is a polyatomic alcohol, and the blue indigo may be
looked upon as an ammonia derivative of some body related to the
benzoic series. The apparent analogy which exists between the
production of indigo from indican, and the production of chloro-
phyle, or green colouring matter of leaves in blanched buds, and
of the red colouring matter of blood from white chyle, led us to
suspect that both are the products of the decomposition of a gluco-
side. On treating white chyle globules with peroxide of hydrogen,
a portion of the white chyle became red, and traces of some kind of
sugar could be detected in the solution.

But we cannot follow out these relations any further. Enough,
iiowever, has been said to show that step by step the chemist has
traced up the chemical transformations of matter until, as we have
just seen, there remains but one gi'oup of bodies of whose con-
stitution he has not more or less learned the secret ; and that even
that class itself, the very bodies by which the functions of animal
life are carried on, has had a beam of light thrown upon it from
the lamp of science.

We learn too from this analysis that as we proceed upwards
the compounds become more and more complex. A group of atoms

46^ The Progress of Chemical Science*

constitntiiig the smallest free part of a body is made up of a great
number of individual groups of simpler composition, and each of
these again of others still simpler, until at length we reach tlie
simple bodies. The more complex a group, the more unstable it
is ; that is, the more easily it is broken into a number of simpler
groups. Thus a triatomic alcohol is less stable than a monatomic
one. Still more unstable are the hexatomic ones. So in a homo-
logous series the more condensed substances are the most easily
decomposed when heated. Again, the corresponding compounds
formed by analogous substances are not equally stable ; thus, phos-
phamine, which may be looked upon as ammonia in which phos-
phorus replaces nitrogen, is far more liable to change than common
ammonia or its derivatives ; indeed the complex derivatives of such
a body must be among the most imstable substances of which w^e cau
conceive, and therefore it is that they enter into the composition of
the nerves and brain. When nervous or cerebral matter decays, we
get among the products of phosphamine and its derivatives. Again,
in the brain itself we find the materials out of which those remark-
able bodies are elaborated in the form of an acid ether of phos-
phoric acid with the triatomic alcohol glycerine, the alcohol of the
majority of the fats. How complex and unstable must be the com-
pounds which, in decomposing, serve to convey every thrill of plea-
sure, of hope, of sorrow, every act of the will ; which enable us to
distinguish the waves that produce light, whose length is measured
in miUionths of an inch and their duration in millionths of a second,
and to distinguish the quality and velocity of each wave in the storm
of sonorous vibrations produced by a great orchestra !

But chemists no longer proceed by way of analysis. The classifi-
cation by homologous series and types of double decomposition ; the
division of reactions into homologous, isologous, and heterologous ;
and the study of the reagents which produce either of those classes
of reactions under given conditions of temperature and other circum-
stances,— all this has opened the way to the synthesis of organic
bodies with almost as much certainty as that of mineral bodies,
making allowance for the great instability of the former. Although
the first synthesis of an organic body was effected so long ago as
1828 by Wohler, it is only since about 1850 that the state of the
science has admitted of its being attempted with success. The first
chemist who took up the subject in a systematic way was Professor
Kolbe ; but it is M. Berthelot who has been most successful, both in
the number and importance of his syntheses. His researches have
given a new direction to organic chemistry. Chemists are no longer
satisfied with mere analysis; synthesis must confinn the conclusious
of analysis. Within the last few years hundreds of oro^anic com-
pounds have been made without the aid of life ; and there can be no
doubt but that in a few years, notwitlistanding the opinion of Berze-

I

The Progress of Chemical Science, "i^S

lius that we could not hope to imitate the products of life, we shall be
In a position to reproduce artificially the majority of the substances
which constitute the proximate prmciples of plants and animals.

Tlie establishment of the new theory of types has abolished the
distinction between oroanic and inorganic chemistry, — a distinc-
tion which ought henceforward not to be kept up in teaching the
science. The synthesis by double decompositions has removed the
last barrier between them. And thus has been fulfilled a prediction
of M. Dumas : " If I attach some importance to seeing this useless
barrier which still separates the combinations of the two kingdoms
disappear, it is precisely because I have the firm and profound
conviction that the future progress of general chemistry will be
rlue to the application of the laws discovered in organic chemis-
try."^ How completely the author of this observation anticipated
the character of the progress that has since been made, the preced-
ing pages show.

The new type theory, like, the old one, is, strictly speaking, not
a theory of causation ; to frame such a theory we must look upon
chemical phenomena from a far wider point of view. We must
get rid of those notions of the independence of phenomena, which
the division of physical science into departments for its more con-
venient pursuit engenders in our minds, and see how chemistry is
to be made part of a great whole, embracing all branches of phy-
sical science. The correlation which has been established between
electricity, light, and heat, and the intimate relation they have
with chemical action, show clearly that they are all due to the
action of the same cause. The theory which attributes light to
undulations of a medium of great tenuity, may be said to be now
universally accepted. The labours of Sir William Herschel, See-
beck, Sir David Brev/ster, De la Eoche, Berard, Melloni, Forbes,
Knoblauch, Baden Powell, De Senarmont, and others, have assimi-
lated heat and light, and proved that the phenomena of the latter
can only be explained by a system of undulatory movements,
wliich, when they take place in the same ether or medium as light,
produce the phenomena of radiant heat; and when these finer
waves communicate their motion to particles of ordinary matter
they produce those phenomena of expansion, changes of physical
state, and others which constitute an apparent distinction between
heat and light. Indeed Melloni, so long ago as 1842, may be said
to have demonstrated the identity of the two forces, subject to the
test of the decisive experiment of interference, that capital pheno-
menon by which Dr. Young established the undulatory theory of
light upon a firm basis. This decisive experiment may be de-
scribed as the production of cold by the simultaneous action of
two rays of heat, just as we produce blackness from two rays of

^ Train de Chimie appliquCe mix Arts, torn. y.

464 TJie Progress of Chemical Science.

light mutually extinguishing each other. It was effected in 1847
by M. Fizeau and M. Foucault.

The moment we admit that heat is a motion capable of being
communicated to the molecules of matter, we institute a connection
between heat and the motion of masses. Lavoisier said that in
chemical combination matter was not annihilated or created, it
was only changed in form. We may now say the same of motion ;
we cannot create or annihilate it, we can only change its character
or direction. Energy or motion may, however, be dissipated ;
thus the sun is always sending off countless waves of light and
heat, which, although not annihilated, are lost to our system.
When a weight falls to the ground, its motion is arrested, but
it is not annihilated ; it is merely transformed into molecular
motion or heat. So if a wheel be made to rotate by a given
force and we suddenly arrest it by an obstacle, the rotatory mo-
tion, like the rectilineal one, is transformed into heat. The work
done by any force may always be compared to that required to
lift a weight to a certain height; thus, the work which is ex-
pended in lifting a pound weight one foot, or which would be
available by allowing it to fall one foot, is called a " foot-pound ;"
or, as in France, and generally by scientific men out of Great Bri-
tain, the work which would be expended in lifting one kilogramme
to a height of one metre is called a " kilogrammetre." The mecha-
nical effect which a force produces, say in setting bodies in motion,
in lifting a load, or in other purposes to which machines are
applied, depends not only on the force, but on the distance through
which it acts. Thus, if we employ the force of gTavity to produce
a mechanical effect by means of a falling weight, we shall find that
the work done during this fall is proportional to the quantity of
the weight and the height from which it descends. Wlien a body
falls, the velocity acquired is proportional to the time of its fall, —
that is, the velocity of a body at the end of the second second of
its fall is double, and at the end of the third second three times,
that at the end of the first. The height fallen through is, on the
other hand, proportional to the square of the time, or, what is the
same thing, augments in the same proportion as the square of the
velocity, which is proportionate to the time. If we impart to a
body the velocity which it had acquired when its motion was
arrested, while falling from a given height, it will rise to the
same height ; but as the distance travelled increases as the square
of the velocity, if we double the velocity of a projectile it will
travel four times as far; if we quadruple it, it will go sixteen
times ; and so on. The mechanical effect produced by a weight
falling or expended in projecting it being proportional to the
height, and the latter being proportional to the square of the velo-
city, the power represented by any motion may be expressed by

The Progress of Chemical Science. 465

the product of the mass of the body in motion multiplied by the
square of its velocity. Now if the whole of the motion of a falling
body be converted into molecular motion, or, which, with the ex-
ceptions we shall presently make, is the same thing, into heat, it is
clear that the amount of heat produced by arresting a body in
motion augments as the square of the velocity, and that we have
a standard whereby to measure the relation between heat and
motion.

The new views regarding heat which have been put forward
during the last twenty years, and which are based upon the equi-
valence of heat and motion just stated, are only a development of
tlie Newtonian theory, which enables it to embrace the motions of
molecules as well as of ma,sses. It does not come within our
present scope to show how the experiments of Davy and Rumford,
and the mathematical investigations of Bernoulli, Fourier, and
Sadi-Carnot have been developed by Seguin, Mayer, Joule, Colding,
Thomson, Rankine, Helmlioltz, Clusius, and others, into the first
outlines, not merely of a theory of heat, but of a general dynamical
theory of energy. Our object is only to direct attention to the
bearing of this theory upon chemistry, and especially to show how
profoundly it will modify the fundamental ideas of chemical phe-
nomena. We may, however, state that the idea of equivalence
between heat and the motion of masses, in the sense in which it is
now understood, appears to have first occurred to Dr. Julius Robert
Mayer of Heilbronn, and Mr. Joule of Manchester. The former
attempted to determine its value, though perhaps upon an erroneous
basis ; but his application of the hyjwthesis to animal power and
heat, and to the solar system, show clearly that his ideas were
correct. Mr. Joule worked out the subject experimentally with a
perseverance that has rarely been equalled. These two men may
therefore be considered as having mthout rivalry linked the phe-
nomena of molecular motion to that of universal gravitation, and
laid the foundation for a new theory which will embrace all physical
phenomena. By long and varied experiments Mr. Joule deter-
mined the mechanical equivalent of heat to be 772 foot-pounds,
or, expressed according to the French standard, 425 kilogrammetres ;
that is, he determined that the amount of heat which would raise
the temperature of a pound of water one degree Fahrenheit would,
if all applied mechanically, be sufficient to lift one pound weight
772 feet high, or 772 pounds one foot. And conversely, if a weight
of one pound falls 772 feet, it ought to produce a quantity of heat
sufficient to raise the temperature of one pound of water one
degree. We have thus a means of determining the true work of
machines and of chemical action.

Before addressing ourselves to the connection between the dy-
namical theory of heat and chemical action, we must point out a

i

4G6 I'he Progress of Chemical Science,

distinction which exists between passive and active forces. When
we wind up the weight of a clock, we store up force wliich would
become active if the string were cut, so as to allow the weight to
fall. In this case the whole of the stored-up force would be ex-
hausted at once, and would be transformed into heat when the weight
struck the ground. If we allow the weight to descend slowly by-
means of its coiled string, it sets the clock in motion, and the
weight on reaching the ground produces no heat. Now the force
stored up in the weight before it begins to descend is usually called
possible or potential energy or tension, while the energy which the
weight has acquired in falling is called active, actual, or dynamical
energy. According as the weight falls, the potential energy de-
creases, but tlie active energy increases, the sum of the two being
always constant.

When we heat water or any other body exposed to the air, two
phenomena may be observ^ed, — the body grows bigger, that is, ex-
pands, and the substance gets hotter, that is, the mercury in a
thermometer applied to it will also expand, and it will produce the
sensation of heat when the hand is brought into contact "with it. If
we place the water under such a pressure as to prevent the expan-
sion, we shall find that the quantity of heat which is required to
produce the same elevation of temperature that was acquired in
the open vessel will be less. Tlie difference between the two quan-
tities was used in producing the expansion ; these two quantities
are called the specific heat mider a constant pressm-e, and the
specific heat at a constant volume, the former being always greater
than the latter. The difference between the two specific heats
affords us, therefore, a means of determining the relative amount
of mechanical force required to keep the particles of a body at a
certain distance apart. Before the water began to expand, the particles
were held together by a certain force which had to l3e overcome
before the particles began to separate. The portion of the heat
lost in this operation is said to perform interior work, which, being
a work used in overcoming resistance, is negative, that is, it is ab-
sorbed ; while the expansion is called exterior work, and is also
negative. The sum of the two constitutes dynamic energy ; while
the portion of heat which produces the effect of temperatiu'e may
be considered as potential energy.

The quantity of heat which produces the same amount of po-
tential energy is the same for all the simple bodies, according to
the law of Didong and Petit. Generally speakuig, when a law is
established in a science it is expressed in a form which is at once
simple and absolute ; bye and bye perturbations are detected in its
action. The beautiful researches of M. Regnault have shown that
these perturbations extend to xa ^^ the whole specific heat in the
case of the simple bodies. The cause of these perturbations is

The Progress of Chemical Science, 467

obviously to be sought for in the action of the interior work,
making due allowance for the errors arising from the difficulty of
determining the specific heat of bodies under constant j^ressure.

The specific heats of atoms being assumed equal, it is evident
that we can determine the atomic weights from the specific heats
of equal quantities of the elements. The atomic weights thus ob-
tained are not always identical with those adopted by chemists ; and
to distingTiish those thus calculated they are called therr^ial equi-
valents. Thus while the thermal equivalent of carbon is 12, or that
now adopted as the atomic weight by chemists, that of oxygen is
8, sulphur 16, potassium 19 5, and sodium 11*5, that is, half the
chemical equivalents. Some chemists use this as an argument
against doubling the equivalents of oxygen ; but to be consistent they
should also adopt the thermal equivalents of sodium and potassium.
The chemical and thermal equivalents, although sometimes iden-
tical, and always multiples or submultiples of each other, should
not be confounded. The difference is undoubtedly connected with
the chemical polyatomicity of bodies, and will help one day to
reveal some important molecular law.

Just as we may explain the perturbations of the specific heats
of atoms by differences in the relative amount of interior work
required to change the position of the atoms in different substances,
so we may in like manner explain the perturbations of the law of
isomorphism by the unequal amounts of interior work performed
in different parts of a system of molecules. As the sum of the
interior work constituting the dynamic energy which is employed
in expanding a crystal along its different axes of elasticity may be
assumed to be in direct proportion to their lengths, except in ob-
lique crystals, while the proportion used in interior and exterior
work may be very different along each axis, it will follow that the
rate of expansion along each axis will be different. It may happen
that the whole of the dynamic energy may be used in interior
work, along one axis, so that no expansion will take place in that
direction. In crystals belonging to the oblique systems, the ratio
of dynamic energy will not be in the ratio of the lengths of the
axes ; and it may therefore even happen that such a crystal, as
in the case of gypsum, may contract in one direction while it ex-
pands in the others on the application of heat. As the rate of
expansion is uniform along each axis, the law of symmetry is not
affected by temperature, and consequently the law of multiple
proportion is independent of temperature. The rate of expansion
of crystals of isomorphic bodies not being equal, they would not
equally expand along their corresponding axes when exposed to the
same temperature ; that is, the ratio of the interior and exterior
work would not be the same in each. M. Sainte Claire Deville
thinks that it might be possible to find for each series of isomor-

voL. IV. i i

468 The Progress of Chemical Science.

phoTis substances a temperature at which the unequal expansions
of two different crystals would compensate each other, and both
would then have equal angles and be absolutely isomorphic. This
is quite possible in a few cases, but it could not be generally true.
In fact, the perturbations in the angles of isomorphous crystals are
due to absolute differences in the arrangement of some constituent
group of their molecides.

It is evident from the foregoing observations that the interior
work of heat is that which is most connected mth chemical phe-
nomena. Did our space permit, we might show its relation to
latent heat, and many other phenomena ; but we must content our-
selves with a few observations on the theory of gases and homo-
logous groups, — the one because it shows how completely the new
theory of heat has already solved many of the difficulties con-
nected with that form of matter, and the other because it will
show how much may be expected from the study of this class of
bodies.

Let us suppose -a limited space to be occupied by a number of
molecules separated from each other by such a distance as to be
removed from the influence of their reciprocal actions. If these
molecules be in motion, they will move with a uniform velocity in
straight lines. As a consequence of this movement, each of the
molecules in turn would strike against the other, or against the
walls of the vessel, mi til a mean condition would be established
in which we should assume the molecules to be continually moving
in every possible direction. The molecules which approach or
impinge against each other must necessarily alter each other's path,
and ultimately strike against the vessel. In consequence, however,
of the distance of the particles, the number of them which at any
given moment are striking against each other or the walls, or
moving in paths modified by their impinging against several mole-
cules at the same time, is insignificant compared to the number of
molecules whose motion is rectilineal ; or, what comes to the same
thing, the duration of the epochs of perturbations are insensible
compared with the epochs of uniform motion. Hence the action
upon the vessel would not sensibly differ from what it would be if
we were to suppose that all the molecules travelled continually in
straight lines and in all imaginable directions mthout meeting
each other. This fictitious system is accordingly substituted for
the real in considering the properties of gases. The constant
striking of the molecules against the sides of the vessel produces
pressure, which it is easy to see must be equal in all directions ;
and from what we have already said of the relation of force to
velocity and distance travelled, it is evident that Mariotte's law is
a simple consequence of this theory. The law of dilatation and of
specific heat may also be deduced from it

The Progress of Chemical Science, 469

The superiority of this theory over that of La Place is nowhere
better sliown than in the explanation which it affords of the per-
turbations which affect the law of Mariotte in the case of the ma-
jority of gases. Only hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen can be said
to approach the condition of perfect gases according to the preceding
theory; all other gases deviate more or less from it, especially under
considerable pressures. To explain these deviations we have only
to suppose the ratios of the epochs of perturbations, while still
remaining small, to become sensible, in order to produce at once
deviations fi'om the strict laws of pressure, dilatation, and specific
heat. When the epochs of perturbation become considerable, — that
is, when the moving molecules mutually interfere so as to cause
them to unite into groups, constantly breaking up and forming
anew, — part of the motion is arrested and transformed into heat, we
have a liquid, and the heat evolved is the latent heat of vapour.

When we burn solids in gases the phenomena of heat and light
are produced by the constant rain of gaseous molecules which strike
the solid, and the motion of which, being arrested, is in part con-
verted into heat, and in part into the molecular motion of the
molecules of the compound ; — combination itself being only the
shock of different molecular systems, by which part of the motion
is arrested and converted into heat, and a new molecular system
moving with a velocity equal to the difference between the sum of
the velocities of the constituents, and the equivalent of the heat
produced by combination. The nearer bodies approach in proper-
ties, that is, the nearer in kind and direction the motions of two
systems are, the less heat will be produced by their combination,
because the motions of one system will not interfere much with
those of the other. Such compounds are easily broken up, because
only a smaU part of the original potential force of their constituents
has been converted iiito heat, and lost. If part of the potential
energy of the constituents of a body be lost by the act of combina-
tion, the new system cannot be broken up, and the constituents
again set free, without an equivalent quantity of motion to that
lost as heat being suppUed. Hence we can understand why it is
that the organs of animals and plants are made up of polyatomic
alcohols which evolve very little heat in their combination, but
keep it stored up for the final object of the production of heat and
motion in animals ; we get this stored-up heat when we burn wood.

It foUows from the new theory of gases, that if in any vapour
we substitute one of the atoms by a denser one, we increase the
ex)0chs of perturbation, and may do so even to the extent of con-
verting the body into the Hquid state. This explains why olefiant
gas, when part of its hydrogen is displaced by chlorine, becomes
hquid. In the homologous carbides of hydrogen we have the same
result ; every successive addition of CHg increasing the density of the

470 The Progress of Chemical Science.

vapour and the magnitude of the perturbations in the gaseous state
at the same temperature. When two bodies unite, each of which
is capable of uniting with a third singly, heat is evolved. If tliis
compound be then broken up by combining with the third sub-
stance, the heat evolved ought to be less than would be evolved
if the third body had combined with corresponding quantities of
the constituents not united. The homologous carbides of hydro-
gen, and apparently all their homologous derivatives, are exceptions
to this rule. Thus the quantities of heat produced by the combus-
tion of equal weights of CoH^ and CoqH^o do not differ, according
to the experiments of Favre and Silbermann, by more than 8 per
cent of the total quantity evolved by the first body, olefiant gas ;
and yet the second body is a solid, and may be looked upon as a
compomid of ten molecules of the first, compressed in the state of
gas into the volume of one. Every one knows what a very great
force would be required to compress a gas into y\- of its volume.
It is consequently a measure of that which is engaged in keeping
the ten molecules of C0H4 in the homologous form of CoqH^o-
The phenomenon of allotropism of simple and compound bodies,
that is, the existence of the same body in two or more condi-
tions, diff'ering in physical properties, may perhaps be classed with
that of homologous bodies. In the case of allotropic oxygen, or
ozone, that remarkable substance which is formed, among other
ways, by the passage of electricity through air, the specific gravity
appears, from Dr. Andrews's experiments, to be sensibly four
times that of oxygen, or four volumes of common oxygen con-
densed into one.^ According to the rule which we have given
above — that the specific gravities of the simple bodies are propor-
tional to their equivalents — the specific gravity of the vapour of
sulphur ought to be 2*2 compared to air. Dumas found by ex-
periment that it was QQ, or, in other words, that one volume of
the vapour of sulphur contains three times as many molecules as
one of oxygen. M. Bineau found, however, that when the vapour
was heated to about 1000° cent, or 1800° Fahr., it expanded into
a gas which had one-third of its original specific gravity, that is,
one in accordance with theory. The experiment has been repeated
lately by M. Sainte Claire Deville and M. Troost, and they fix the
temperature at 860° cent; the same thing occurs with the va-
pours of selenium and tellurium. It is worthy of note in these
cases that the specific gravity in the allotropic state is a multiple
of that in the ordinary state. In all these cases the motion which
would represent the heat of combination, and in the case of the
liquid and solid carbides of hydrogen a part at least of the lat-ent
heat of one or both states also, is employed in interior work. There
is no more wonderful example of the adaptation of means to an
end in the economy of nature than this retention of heat by the

The Progress of Chemical Science. 471

homologous bodies. All the organs of plants and animals consist
of such compounds, which are condensed without loss of motion,
while this very storing up makes their materials more ready to
enter into new and stable compounds, and thus to set free the
stored-up force as animal heat and motion.

As the vapour of a compound rises in temperature, the pertur-
bations of its gaseous motions diminish ; the molecules ultimately
split up into simpler ones, as the vibrations or revolutions, or
whatever be the kind of motion of the atoms of each molecule,
increase in velocity. Even the elements of water cannot remain in
combination at a very high temperature ; and it is probable that
there is no compound known to us which can exist at very intense
temperatures, — certainly none of those which can be converted into
vapour. If we could continue to raise the temperature, would the
molecules of the simple bodies also split up into simpler systems ?
and if so, where would be the limits of greatest simplicity? Are
the simple bodies higher members of homologous series, which, like
sulphur, decompose at successively higher temperatures into simpler
and still simpler molecules? Would the simplest molecules be
those composing the ether which is diffused through space, and
whose molecules are so simple that they serve to convey the won-
derful vibrations of light and heat? If not, what then is this
ether, millions of cubic miles of which would scarcely weigh a pound?
To consider it as a passive medium conveying the undulations of
light and heat, without being affected, like all other matter, by
them, is wholly inconsistent with all known physical laws. The
extent of the action of light and heat upon it during any given
time may be safely neglected in mathematical, but not in physical,
investigations. If the solar and stellar systems be but segregations
or condensations of ether, and consequently the simple bodies but
certain groups or systems of molecules on the type of homologous
compound radicals, the force which has been absorbed in their
interior work must be enormous ; for most of our metals exist in
the solar atmosphere, as has been established by spectrum analysis.

When light is admitted to a darkened chamber by a long
narrow slit, so as to pass through a triangular bar or prism of
solid glass, or a hollow one filled with certain transparent liquids,
the waves of different length and velocity which, by their simul-
taneous action on the eye, produce the impression of white light,
not bemg equally refracted in passing from the air to the glass on
one side, and from the glass to the air on the other, are separated,
so that instead of a long bar of white light we see a stripe composed
of different coloured bands. This is what is known by the very
inappropriate name of the solar spectrum. In the year 1814
Frauenhofer, a celebrated optician of Munich, following out an
observation of Dr. WoUaston, found that the spectrum was crossed

472 The Progress of Chemical Science.

by a number of black bars or lines, not only towards the ends
where it faded into obscurity, but in the brightest part towards
the middle, which were invariable in position, so that he was able
to tabulate them by distinguishing each by a letter of the alphabet
according to its position. By the use of more powerful instru-
ments Sir David Brewster added to the number ; but Prof Kirchoff
now, by still better instruments, finds that there are thousands of
these lines. Sir David Brewster also found that other black lines
made their appearance when the spectrum was examined as the
sun approached the horizon. These new lines were supposed to be
due to atmospheric absorption by the vapours near the horizon,
while the permanent lines of Frauenhofer were considered to be
due to causes beyond our atmosphere.

The spectrum s produced by other sources of light were next
examined, and even those of the stars. It was soon found that
when light passed through certain gases and vapour, as, for ex-
ample, peroxide of nitrogen, the lines were increased ; while when
certain substances were in a state of ignition in a flame, coloured
lines of gTcater brightness were observed. Indeed, Frauenhofer
himself had noticed that the flame of a wax-candle gave such bright
lines. Led, no doubt, by these observations, different physicists,
as Sir David Brewster, Swan, and others, examined the spectrums
of the flame of alcohol holding salts in solution, and found bright
lines in difierent parts of the spectrum. Swan even noticed the
presence of a bright yellow line when a little common salt is
added to the spirit of wine. Such was the state of the subject
when it was taken up by Professor Bunsen and Professor Kirchoft*.
They systematically investigated the action of substances in pro-
ducing bright lines, and found that it depended on the metal.
Finding, when they examined the saline substances left on evapo-
rating certain mineral waters, and also certain minerals, some lines
which were new to them, they concluded that the bodies examined
contained new metals. These they succeeded in isolating, and
gave to them the names of caesium and rubidium. Afterwards
Mr. Crooks, by the same means, discovered a third metal, the
compounds of which have been studied by M. Lamy, and to which
the name thallium has been given.

Each metal is not distinguished by a single line, though, as in
the case of sodium, one is so brilliant, and the other so unimport-
ant and requiring such good instruments, that we speak only of
the yellow sodium line. Potassum produces three recognisable
lines, one in the red, another in the violet, and a third much fainter
intermediate line. Lithium produces two lines, a pale yeUow and
a bright red. The metals belonging to the group of alkaline earths
give much more complicated spectrums than the alkaline metals :
strontium, for instance, gives eight lines, — six red, one orange, and

The Progress of Chemical Science, 473

one blue ; calcium gives three, but only in intense flames, — green,
red, and blue ; while iron gives no less than sixty. The quantities
of those bodies which produce the lines for such a length of time
as to be caught by the eye is so small as to give us a faint image
of the molecules of the cosmic ether. It is calculated that the
ynoouijotb part of a miligramme of sodium can be detected by
this means.

In 1847 M. A. Matthiesen proposed to account for the black
lines of the solar spectrum by the absorption of the light in the
solar atmosphere ; an explanation which was received favourably
by Sir David Brewster and Dr. Gladstone, who, before the dis-
coveries of Bunsen and Kirchoff, had used the prism to determine
the absorptive powers of different solutions, and had obtained some
very important results. Professor Stokes, in his curious experi-
ments on fluorescence, a name given to the phenomena presented
by certain liquids and solids of radiating as light a part of the
heat which they absorb, suggests, if indeed he has not somewhere
given, a similar explanation. In the year 1849 M. Toucaidt, while
observing the spectrum of the flame of the voltaic arch, observed a
yellow line due to some compound of sodimn volatilised by the
flame, part, no doubt, of the ash of the charcoal-points ; but when
the sun's rays were allowed to traverse the voltaic arch, this yellow
line became black. Professor Kirchoff appears not to have known
of this remarkable experiment when, in 1859, he discovered that
the bright line produced by a sodium flame occupies the exact
place in the solar spectrum of one of the lines of Prauenhofer, and
that most of all the other bright lines produced by difi'erent metals
correspond to some of the dark lines of the spectrum. The expla-
nation of the phenomenon is given by Poucault's experiment : A
gas or vapour absorbs the particular rays which it emits itself.
Professor Kirchofl" made the splendid generalisation that the light
of the sun comes from the solid mass which contains the metals
whose lines have been found to correspond to the dark lines of
Prauenhofer; these substances are also in vapour in the solar
atmosphere, and consequently the rays in passing through that
atmosphere have those emitted by the metals extinguished. If we
could examine the spectrum of the light of the solar atmosphere
itself, without the intervention of those from the solid nucleus, the
dark lines would appear bright.

ThLs law of absorption applies also to heat ; that is, vapours
absorb those heat-rays which they can best radiate, as has been
shown by De la Prevostaye, Stewart, and Kirchoff", and confirmed
by a beautiful series of experiments by Professor Tyndall. It ap-
pears from these experiments, as we might indeed expect, that as
the density of the vapour increases the absorption increases also ;
but we cannot know from them whether the absorption follows any

474 The Progress of Chemical Science,

regular law in the homologous series. We would suggest to Pro-
fessor Tyndall to make the delicate experiment of testing the va-
pours of a few of the homologous carbides of hydrogen, which have
a low boiling-point, and consequently give off vapour at common
temperatures by successive portions of the solar thermal spectrum,
in order to see whether those bodies offer thermal lines of absorp-
tion analogous to the metallic lines of the spectrum.

The presence of metals in the solar atmosphere, and in the in-
candescent mass of the sun itself, shows that, even when subjected
to the enormous temperature which must prevail near the sun's sur-
face, the molecular groups of the metals do not appear to separate
into simpler ones. But this does not prove that at still higher
temperatures, such as must have once prevailed in our system, those
metals did not exist in simpler forms. Some idea may be formed
of the enormous force which once existed in our system, if the
whole of the solar system was once nebulous, and consequently of
the temperature which it was possible might have existed, by the
calculation of Professor Helmholtz, according to which the poten-
tial energy of our system was 454 times greater than it is now,
so that the J|-|- of it have been lost, as he thinks, by radiation
into space as heat. Yet what remains of that primitive energy if
all converted into heat would be sufficient to raise a mass of water
equal in weight to the sun and planets, — twenty-eight millions of
degrees centigrade, a temperature of which the mind cannot form
the slightest conception. If our hypothesis of the absorption of
energy in interior work in the formation of homologous series or
condensed atoms be correct, the whole of this force would not have
been radiated off ; but just as, when we heat a body, a part of the
heat performs interior and exterior work, while the rest produces
temperature and may radiate away, so, in the formation of metallic
groups, part of the heat was used in interior work. This interior
work may be unstable, as in the case of that by which solids are
converted into liquids; or it may be permanent, as we have sup-
posed to be the case in the homologous series of carbides of hydro-
gen. Our view, then, is, that the simple bodies represent stable
molecular groups which still conserve part of the initial energy of
our system, which we have not now force enough to transfonn,
as we can do in the case of the compounds of carbides of hydro-
gen. The very lines of the spectrum which reveal to us the con-
stitution of the sun also show us that the metals are complex
groups of molecules ; for how could a simple molecule extinguish
sixty different rays ? Nay, more : for as we improve our spectrum
and increase its brilliancy, the number of lines which represent
each metal increases. This has been well shown by the experiments
of Professor Miller on the spectrum of Thallium at different tem-
peratures. It is only very complex groups of molecules that could

The Progress of Chemical Science. 475

intercept so many waves of different velocities in making tlieir way
between the ultimate particles as do the metals.

Geology points to the successive stages by which in lapse of ages
the earth assumed its present form ; astronomy points back to a
period far more distant, when " the earth was without form," be-
fore the molecular motion of nebulous atoms had been converted
into the motion of whirling globes. Does chemistry now point
back to a period still more remote in the womb of time, to the
birth of simple bodies ? Shall we be ever able to determine their
relative ages, and apply that knowledge to ascertain the relative
age of the various stellar worlds, or of those green and red suns
which apparently are formed of very few bodies ? Our readers
will say that we have pushed the speculation far enough. Whether
that speculation be of any worth or not, it will sufficiently indicate
the part which chemistry will play in the development of a great
dynamical theory of the miiverse.

[ 476 ]

THACKERAY.

There are some -writers at whom we wonder as thinking-ma-
chines ; others whom we seek to know as persons through their
works; and others, again, whom we like to read about, though
we neglect their writings. We choose to make the acquaint-
ance of Johnson through Boswell, rather than in Rasselas and
the Rambler. We read Milton without much caring to know
what manner of man he was. But we are for ever trying to put
together every hint that Shakespeare gives us, in order that we
may come to know something of himself. Yet Shakespeare was
a poet the effect of whose creations does not depend on his own
personal presence. His sublime thoughts are separated from his
mind, and stand by themselves as solidly as trees or mountains.
His humour derives none of its zest from any relation to his
personal oddities. Yet such surpassing gifts, such loveable qua-
lities, shine in his works, that we yearn to know him.

In this same class, at however great a distance, we place
Thackeray. A knowledge of the man is not necessary for under-
standing his works. But his works disclose to us such a sym-
pathetic nature, that we like to know him ; while he babbles to us
so artlessly of himself, that we cannot help making his acquaint-
ance. Hence it is that of all recent writers he excites the great-
est personal sympathy. In Macaulay we see only the orator
and the partisan. We admire his memory, his enthusiasm, his
genius ; and we think little more about him. In Mr. Carlyle,
one of the most thoroughly individual of our writers, who seeks
to commune with a friend's heart ? We weigh his reasons, we
admire his talent, we are carried away by his eloquence, we bow
to his heroes or we contemn them, we are amused or bored
with his sputtering ; but we forget the author in his works. In
Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, egotistical as he is, frantic as are his
efforts to make us believe that he tells us all that is in his soul,
and much as he desires to establish himself as our director and
instructor, we see only the man of imagination, whose thoughts
are no parts of himself, in whom we cannot separate affectation
from reality, fancies from facts. In Mr. Dickens we do not see
a man who even pretends to offer us his heart to read, or who
identifies his characters with himself, as Sir Edward Bulwer Lyt-
ton does. We delight in his stories, but we care nothing for him,
except as a productive national property. But in Thackeray we
see a man who cannot help telling us of himself, and who disdains
to give us a false picture ; who draws from his own image in a
mirror ; who does not know how to separate himself from his own

Thackeray. 4t(t

creations, or to leave them to stand alone. He nourishes them
with blood warm from his own veins, and makes their hearts keep
time with his. His own character is ever the background of
the pageant he displays to us. His puppets pass before us as if
in their creator's day-dream, instead of on a solid stage — as if
we saw their images within the magic-lantern, instead of on the
whitened wall.

This openness and transparency of soul is Thackeray's great
characteristic. It accounts for many of his peculiarities as critic,
historian, artist, and thinker. It explains the characters he
creates, and the circumstances in which he exhibits them. It
throws light on his special humour, and on his judgments and
theories. It goes far to explain his intellectual tastes, his cri-
tical preferences, and the artistic forms he adopted. It tells us
the reason of many of his weaknesses. It is, in fact, the key-
note both of the man and of his works. Let us see how this
happens.

There is a point where Thackeray's ideas of criticism, his-
tory, art, and philosophy unite and become identical. For their
ultimate aim is but one — to discover and display the soul. In
his view, criticism discovers the soul that lurks within books
and pictures; history discovers the soul that actuated the men
who lived in past ages ; art displays soul through the creations
of the poetical imagination ; philosophy teaches how to display
our own living soul in our words and deeds. His critical essays,
his historical chapters, his novels, his exhortations and specula-
tions, are at bottom one and the same thing. His critical essays
are historical sketches of authors ; his historical essays are cri-
tical summaries of memoirs and letters, illustrated from pictures,
buildings, streets, old almanacks, and newspapers; his novels
are fictitious memoirs ; and his philosophy is merely a series of
examples and fables. Such are their similarities; let us now
turn to their differences.

His criticism tries to find the man in his works — to teach
people to see the soul gleaming from the eyes of the portrait,
the character and mind of the artist radiating from the forms
he drew or the lines he penned. The critic, as Thackeray con-
ceived him, must sympathise with the man he criticises, and
must comprehend him. The first sign requisite to prove the
critic's mission is his ability to imitate and parody what he cri-
ticises. To judge, you must know; if you know, you can do, —
for knowledge is power; it is as easy to create as to define. If
you show that you can do what Rubens or Swift did, then you
prove that you understand their secret, whether you can explain
it or not. If you pretend to explain it, you may easily prove
your sum by putting together again what you have taken to

478 Thackeray,

pieces so cleverly. This is implied in a criticism on Rubens in
one of the Roundabout Papers, where Thackeray laughs at the
brawny, burly creations of the " gross, shaggy, mangy, roaring"
Leo Belgicus, and exposes the easy, almost puerile, contrivances
by which he attained his big eflfects. But then he blows his
criticism to the winds by the reflection that, if Rubens's art were
so vulgar and so easy, some one before now would have been
able to imitate it ; but it is inimitable — he has made his mark
on all time ; '' we wonder at his strength and splendour of will.
He is a mighty, conquering, generous, rampagious lion."

If a complete technical criticism of Rubens ought to amount
to a receipt for producing pictures as good as his, a complete
literary criticism of the master would imply the power of pro-
ducing by word-pictures the same feelings and ideas as are
excited by his canvases. This was Thackeray's ideal of art- cri-
ticism. Though he could well describe a picture in the technical
language of artists, he preferred talking about it in a way cal-
culated to raise the same emotions through the ear that the
picture excited through the eye ; and his usual style of criticism
was either this, or else a dry catalogue of those emotions. One
picture, he says, raises ^' a certain pleasing, dreaming feeling of
awe and musing;" another, *'the most delightful briskness and
cheerfulness of spirit." Thus he tries to find under the paint
the character of the artist, and the motives w^hich inspired him.

In like manner, his criticism of books tries to find the man in
his writings. In his Lectures on the Humourists he sits in judg-
ment on the men and their lives, not on their works. And when
he does criticise their writings, he does it rather by imitations
and parodies than by analysis. In his Novels by Eminent Hands,
in his imitations of the Spectator-paper in Esmond, and of
Horace Walpole's style in The Virginians, in his matchless feats
of taking-off French people, like the Prince de Moncontour and
his mother, and Germans, like the Licentiate in Barry Lyndon,
we see his ideal of criticism. He proves that he has seized the
literary soul, by exhibiting his capacity to re'embody it, though
perhaps his analytical powers were not active enough to enable
him to explain to others wherein that literary individuality con-
sisted. By some magic process, which he did not understand, his
mind passed from the writing to the author ; and while he was
reading Swift's judgments of others, he was unconsciously form-
ing his own image of Swift's soul.

His essays in history are precisely the same in plan, only, in-
stead of artists and humourists, he calls up historical personages
before us. He leaves the beaten tracks of history, disregards the
intrigues of courts and the acts of statesmen, in order to find the
man. Deeds, says Heine, are but the soul's vestments ; old an-

lliackeray, 479

nals are mankind's old wardrobe ; history but a classified cata-
logue of old clothes. Thackeray would make it more ; he would
wave his wand, summon the ghosts from Hades, and bid them
case themselves in their old mantles, and strut for a moment be-
fore us, to show what manner of men they were. He would have
the INIuse of History put off all ceremony and forswear courts,
make herself familiar rather than heroic, and strive, with Hogarth
and Fielding, to give us an idea of the manners of the age, rather
than register its deeds with the gazettes and newspapers.

In his historical essays he is more liberal in his judgments on
the spirits he raises than in his critical lectures. In these his
judgment is guided by considerations exclusively moral : were the
men he writes of tender-hearted ? did they love and honour wo-
men and children? But as a historian he can make allowances
for characters who did not fulfil these conditions, if they showed
themselves men in the great struggles of the world. In spite of
Sir Robert Walpole's loose life, he honours him for his bold and
successful defence of liberty. He admires the iron narrowness of
George III., in spite of the calamities it caused. The one per-
sonage whom he cannot forgive is George IV., for the sufficient
reason that he cannot find out whether he was a person at all, or
merely a bundle of clothes. Strip ofi" his coat, wig, teeth, waist-
coat, and successive under-waistcoats, he says, and you find
nothing. He must have had an individuality, but one cannot
get at any thing actual, and never will be able. In a word, he
was a " Fribble,^^ a nobody.

Thackeray avoided the consequence into which a similar feel-
ing has pushed Mr. Carlyle, and never accepted the Hegelian con-
clusion that success justifies the cause and authenticates the
hero, that might proves right, and that what is is because it
ought to be. He rightly distinguished between domestic and
political morality, and forgave politicians, as such, their domestic
vices only on condition of their serving political right. But his
notions of political right are somewhat hazy, from a cause which
we shall have to point out farther on. It was only by a strong
effort that he could see such a right at all ; and then he could
not distinguish it from social right. His usual mood was, with
Fielding, to define patriots to be place-hunters, and politics to be
the art of getting places ; to think parties an artificial contrivance
to prolong the jobbery of a superannuated oligarchy; to consider
one man as good as another, and having an equal right, not only
to self-government, but to govern others. Order and prosperity
he considered to depend not on the organisation of the state,
but on the feelings and sentiments of the people ; and these he
gi'ounded, not on the wise doing or wiser forbearing of statesmen,
not on the influence of clergymen or demagogues or journalists,

4eO Thackeray,

but on that of some literary humourist, some week-day preacher,
some Johnson — " the great supporter of the constitution, whose
immense authority reconciled the nation to loyalty, and shamed
it out of irreligion." Such a conception debarred him from the
knowledge of the political scale of virtues. He could see that in
private life defects of justice were often only feminine weaknesses,
compensated by an excess of kindness or tenderness, while at-
tempts to do rigid justice often had a stern cold character de-
structive of the domestic charities. But he could not see so
clearly that on the stage of the world the real proportion between
these virtues becomes manifest ; that private weaknesses are am-
plified into public crimes, as well as private crimes softened into
defects on which men are not called to judge, by the mere ampli-
tude of the stage where the man acts his part. In-doors, feminine
weakness or narrowness may be inoffensive, or comic, or pathetic ;
put it upon the throne, and it may work worse woe than the
blackest crime. Shakespeare understood this when he showed
how an amiable innocent like Henry VI., or a nature's gentleman
like Richard II., might be the curse of his country, or when he
exhibited the statesmanlike excellence of the heartless politician
Henry IV. Thackeray had no clear view of it when he founded
his apology for King George III. on the rigid virtues of the man.
To pass to his artistic creations : there is absolutely no differ-
ence in principle between his tales and his critical and historical
lectures ; they are all galleries of portraits, though the characters
he creates are painted at full length and in great detail, while
those whom he recalls into life are merely sketched-in. His
Muse of Fable disdains plots of intrigue as contemptuously as his
Muse of History despises the intrigues of courts. It might be
suspected that he never could make a plot, unless in Esmond he
had proved his ability. But he never did it again ; all his other
novels are slices out of the living body of the time, with the
arteries tied up, and with other signs of good surgery at the be-
ginning, but ending raggedly, and without any artistic reason,
except that they had gone on long enough for the carver to have
served all his company. A plot with him is generally a mere
thread, unravelling into just so many adventures and episodes as
are sufficient to develope the characters. And these characters he
makes as life-like as possible ; many of them are as real as those
he describes in his lectures, but with fictitious names. Almost
any portrait can be remo^'ed from one division to another.
Johnson, left out from the humourists, comes in among the
statesmen in The Four Georges, and among the characters in
The Virginians. The Marquis of Steyne is introduced in the
lectures as a courtier of George IV. Thackeray's most serious
attempt at historical portraiture —the picture of ^Marlborough —

ThacJceraij. 481

finds its place in Esmond, where we also find descriptions ot
!MarlborougVs battles, which would probably have done duty in
his contemplated history of Queen Anne^s reign. Bamj Lyndon
contains criticisms of the system of Frederick the Great, which it
is amusing to compare with the premature certificates of character
given in Esmond to Mr. Carlyle's history. Perhaps the most
innocent example of his rage for turning his novels into portrait-
galleries occurs in The Virginians, where he " somehow^ manages
to bring his hero in contact with the greatest lords and most noto-
rious personages of the empire, and thus introduces his readers
to the great characters of a remarkable time.'^ Sometimes this
is done only as an exercise of his peculiar imitative criticism, like
the new ana and talk which he mints with the effigies of Steele and
Addison, Bolingbroke, Johnson, and Kichardson. Sometimes it
is done with an intention almost Dantesque, as when he makes
General Lambert point out to George Warrington at the levee
the principal courtiers, and give each his due place in the hell,
purgatory, or paradise of modern opinion. But nothing can be
less Dantesque than the motives of his judgment. We have not
here, as we have in The Four Georges, the faintest echo of that
haughty patriotism by which the stern Florentine tries all men_,
and distributes their doom according to the way they abide this
test. In his novels Thackeray drops the political touchstone
which he employed to some extent in his historical lectures, and
adopts one altogether domestic and social, which we may call his
snob-test — a test which, in his way of using it, is applicable to
many other qualities besides those usually considered to make
up the snob, and embraces in its domain almost all moral faults,
arranged, however, on a new scale of gravity and veniality.
With this touchstone in his hand he wanders through the gallery,
and tickets the original of each portrait with his doom. Was
he gentle and loving, but tipsy ? His love saves him ; he only
passes through a brief purgatory into bliss. Was he a brutal
Imsband? To Tartarus with him! Did he hate children?
Pluto, shove him down farther ! It is too whimsical. He
leaves on one side the springs of history, the motives and forces
which we can weigh and appreciate, and busies himself with his
little crooked inch-measure to mete out his due to each, and to
anticipate a verdict upon men's morals which none but the All-
seeing can give. Thus, in his endeavours to escape the narrow-
ness of Dante, he lets his waters floAV over the plain and become
a shallow pool. In his laudable endeavour to decant into the
novel all the religion it will hold, he becomes over-serious in his
fable and namby-pamby in his religion. He seems to consider
our opinions of dead people to be their limbo ; just as he makes
tlieir historical reality consist in the vividness of our ideas con-
cerning them.

482 Thackeray.

But he had a passion for moralising, to which even his dar-
ling exhibition of character was sometimes sacrificed. He often
takes the mask from his face and holds it in his hand, forgets his
assumed character and speaks in his own person, criticising his
inventions and remarking on his performance as it proceeds.
This peculiarity, which many persons have taken as a proof of
want of objective power to project his characters outside his own
mind, and to treat them as real entities, acting by the necessary
sequences of natural laws, and not merely as puppets answering
the strings which the showman chooses to pull, he would himself
have appealed to as the great proof that they were for him liv-
ing persons. To readers they have the life-like characteristics
of being very commonly misunderstood, and of being understood
by diflferent persons in different ways. To their creator, his
own creations often presented the same problems as real per-
sons might. He used to say, in reference to Rawdon Crawley^s
quarrel with Lord Steyne, that he could never make up his
mind whether Becky was guilty or no. He would point out
the very house in E-ussell Square w^here the Sedleys lived.
When remonstrated with for making Esmond marry his mother-
in-law, he said, " I did not make them do it ; they did it them-
selves." In one of his Roundabout Papers he tells of the amaze-
ment he felt at the remarks made by some of his characters :
'^ It seems as if an occult power was moving the pen. The per-
sonage does or says something, and I ask how the dickens did
he come to think of that ?" " I never know whether you are
laughing at me or yourself, George," says one of the Virginian
brothers ; " I never know whether you are serious or jesting."
*' Precisely my own case, Harry my dear," replies the other. It
was Thackeray's case. The real artist has an intuition of what
his characters must do or say ; the theorist determines what he
will make them say or do. One discovers ; the other invents.
One comes, as it were, by luck on his treasures ; the other makes
them, and can tell us all about them.

And the reality which he attributes to his own inventions he
gives to those of other novelists. The creations of Fielding he
considers to be much more facts, to have much more have-been-
hood about them, than the forgotten celebrities mentioned in
the gazettes of the day. Tom Jones and Amelia are to him
much more real persons than those who are named in Smol-
lett's chapter on arts and letters in the reign of George II.
Parson Adams and Primrose were as authentic in his eyes as
Sachevcrell and Warburton, and Gil Bias more real and more
moral than the Duke of Lerma. Like the characters they cre-
ate, the histories of novelists are the only ones that cannot be
controverted. Never was such a Cartesian ! Never was such im-

I

Thackeray. 483

plicit reliance giveu to the principle^ " que les choses que nous
concevons fort clairement et fort distinctement sont toutes
vraies."

And this, indeed, is the whole of his moral philosophy : — The
soul that dares to exhibit itself in full clearness and distinctness
is a true soul. It is as certain to be loved as seen, when it
shines forth in naked simplicity, nor leaves a thought within.
The mouth should be no vizor to the heart ; what the breast
forges the tongue should vent. If men would but let their souls
be seen as God Almighty made them, " stripped of their wicked
deceiving bodies, stark naked as they were before they were
born," then all would be well. His philosophy carries us back
beyond Rousseau's state of nature, beyond the nude animalism
of the Preadamites, almost into the ideal times when first matter
had not yet put on a rag of form. Souls without bodies, bodies
without clothes, society without social organisation, — such are
his ideals. He is a stark Origenist; if he had lived in the third
century he would have believed the father of lies to be the crea-
tor of all things visible. For, he tells us, it is falsehood that
begets concealment, while concealment begets humbug, disguise,
formalism, and ceremony, whence the conventional framework
of society draws its origin.

This theory has taken shape in his snob-philosophy, on
which he brooded from his undergraduate days in 1829, till he
gave it shape in the Snob Papers in Punch. The Snob Papers
began with just descriptions of the snob — eating peas with a
knife, not conforming to the innocent social code, admiring
mean things meanly ; but soon the idea was extended and in-
flated, till snobbishness became an all-pervading gas, a universal
element in man's composition, a common fibre which runs
through us all, and which vibrates in us whenever we are con-
ceited or quackish, or pompous or uncharitable, or proud or
narrow — lowly to dukes or supercilious to shopkeepers. Still
further, it was found to be a quality inseparable from the me-
chanism of society, and incarnate in the diabolical invention of
gentility, which kills honest friendship ; in the organisation of
ranks and degrees of precedence, which rumples equality ; in
court-circulars; in haut ton; in the wicked words, "fashionable,
exclusive, aristocratic ;" in a court-system " that sends men of
genius to the second table ;" in gradations and ranks that en-
courage men to despise their neighbours, and, on their promo-
tion, to forget an old friend, — to be ashamed of their poverty or
their relations or their calling, — to boast of their pedigree, or to
be proud of their wealth.

We must excuse Thackeray for setting up a hierarchy of
genius instead of one of wealth and birth, for abolishing the

VOL. IV. k k

484 Tliackeray,

Red Book to make way for a St. Simonian- Directory of Capa-
cities, because it is a mere oversight into which he was betrayed
by his facile receptivity of his companions' opinions. He never
meant to depose Croesus from the throne in order to crown
Shandon or Pendennis or Ridley, or to substitute Mrs. Leo
Hunter's matinees for Mrs. Tufthunt's drums. He considered
that all differences of rank, however determined, were snobbish,
because the distinguishing quality, whether wealth or birth or ge-
nius, would always be matter for conceit and pretension. Equal-
ity, he saw, was the only remedy; and if equality was contrary to
nature, then nature, he thought, was predestined to be snobbish.

Thus the ideal snob became the devil of the week-day
preacher — something very mean, but at the same time very
great and ubiquitous. It was an inward tempter ; because the
constitution of man is such that the soul can only exhibit itself
in its clothing of outward acts, which acts are only imperfectly
significant of the inner truth which they symbolise, and there-
fore naturally deceptive and hypocritical. It was also an out-
ward tempter ; because the constitution of society is such as to
afford every facility for pretence, and to set a high premium on
hypocrisy and affectation. The fundamental temptation of man
was to humbug himself and his fellows, and to become a snob.
This way of treating the subject is quite in accordance with
Thackeray's peculiar humour. He sets up vulgarity and snob-
bishness as coexistent with the visible universe, and then pro-
ceeds to protest against it. He finds, as it were, the solar system
to be an ill-designed machine, which he could greatly improve ;
and, with Hamlet, he sees in the majestic firmament but a pes-
tilent congregation of vapours, and in man only the quintessence
of dust.

This snob-philosophy, in putting the chief stress on trans-
parency and simplicity of soul, lays itself open to three capital
charges.

First, it excludes justice from its code. For, when it reduces
all crime to selfish hypocrisy, it has no serious condemnation for
the rogue that is not a snob. It pleads for kindness, affection,
self-sacrifice, humility, and all the more feminine virtues, but not
for justice. Justice is too much occupied in adjusting the con-
ventional framework of society, orders, degrees, ranks, all of
which have the original taint of snobbishness deeply ingrained
in them. It does not belong to that emotional energy which
we call the soul. It resides in the reason, and may be expressed
in an arithmetical sum. Not so the real virtues. Again, in-
justice may come from a simple defect of soul, incapable of cal-
culating proportion. It may come also from an excess of love.
All women are more or less unjust; the most feminine the most

Thackeray, 485

unjust. Remember Rachel Esmond and the Little Sister. Behold
Henry Esmond, that accomplished hero, turning traitor in favour
of a cause he despises, merely because he thinks it will please his
mistress. Think of the leniency with which the knavery of
affectionate rascals like Lord Castlewood or Rawdon Crawley is
treated, or of the good-humoured dissection of such innate rogues
as Barry Lyndon or Bob Stubbs, the hero of The Fatal Boots. If
a man has a bend sinister in his soul, he must be a rogue if he is
not a hypocrite; and his roguery ought to be indulgently excused,
like the depredations of a fox, or the cruelty of a cat, as something
natural, innate, predestined. Such seems to be the theory, as it
certainly is the practice, of Thackeray's snob-philosophy. This
made his notions of political right so hazy. For justice is the
political virtue, the social guide, the final solver of all the diffi-
cult casuistiy of the more ethical virtues. No one can be a poli-
tician unless he can at least understand the supremacy of justice
over affection.

Secondly, it vilifies the reason. It does this partly because
it exaggerates the value of the emotions ; partly because it does
not see the exact place to give to reason. Reason, Hke justice,
seems something outside the souls, an external rind of but tem-
porary utility, a protection to the soul, and a medium of its
communication with other souls. But its abuse is only too easy;
its function being to weave the garment of words and acts by
which a soul manifests itself to its fellows, it is the instrument
of aU the untruth, all the pretence, the hypocrisy, the meanness,
the snobbishness in the world. " L'homme qui raisonne est un
animal deprave," says Rousseau in perfect seriousness ; and
Thackeray half agrees with him. The transparency of character
he seeks is usually clearest when reason is weakest. When reason
sets to work, its first effort is to raise a fog round the soul, to
make opaque what before was clear, and to weave a garment
round the nakedness of which it has learned to be ashamed.
Reason is the great enemy of simplicity ; the two must be kept
apart, or they will corrupt each other. He divorces morality and
genius, like certain historians, such as Thiers and Ranke, for con-
trary reasons. Their highest place is given to cleverness ; and
they love to show how great genius without goodness may be.
Their chief heroes are men without moral virtue, such as Riche-
lieu, Frederick, or Napoleon ; while their good men are either
commonplace or dupes. On the other hand, Thackeray's heroes
are dupes, and his men of genius more or less villains. General
Wolfe is almost the only great man whom he treats with entire
sympathy; but, while magnifying his goodness, he detracts from
lis greatness, by attributing his crowning success at Quebec to
pure chance.

486 Thackeray.

Thirdly, it discourages all attempts at moral progress. Its
aim is to exhibit the soul as it is, not as it is not. The desire of
being better than you are tempts you to seem better than you
are. The A^ery acts and habits by which you strive to improve
announce your improvement to the world before it has become
ingrained in your soul; the man, therefore, who seeks to improve
himself must be in some measure a sham and a humbug. But,
more than this, real improvement is impossible. A man may throw
off his evil habits, and become once more nearly as good as he
was before he began to reason ; but he cannot improve on this.
As nature made a soul, so it must remain. Self-improvement is
impossible. You read in saints' lives how one cured his bad
temper, and another strove till his chief defect became his prin-
cipal virtue. Moonshine ! Thackeray can believe that a man
can learn a language or master a science, but not that by taking
thought he can add to his moral stature. All is vanity, look you;
and so the preacher is vanity, too.^ You may as well show your-
self as nature made you, because you cannot be different. Are you
a thief, the son of thieves? You cannot choose but thieve. We will
pity you, and make your prison comfortable. We are all of us poor
asses, driven by fate from the abyss behind us to the abyss before
us; it is a toss-up whether we are ridden by the devil, or by our
good angel, or by the ghostly snob. If we are good, let us keep
so. If we have made ourselves bad, let us undo our handiwork.
If we have a defective nature, God help us ; let us at least be
dogs, or pigs, or foxes, if we cannot be men. Whatever we are,
let it be our study to be, not to seem.

Another consequence of this philosophy, the highest aim of
which is to discover the soul under its clothing, and to exhibit
it as it is, is a certain womanishness in those whom it actuates.
Shakespeare says that transparency of character is that which
mainly distinguishes women from men :

'* Their smoothness, like a goodly champaign plain,

Lays open all the little worms that creep :

In men, as in a rough -grown grove, remain

Cave-keeping evils, that obscurely sleep.

Through crystal walls each little note will peep.

Though men can cover crimes with bold, stern looks,
Poor women's faces are their own faults' books."

It is congruous that one whose feelings cause him to found
his philosophy on simplicity and openness should understand the
character of women better than that of men. And all Thackeray's
most subtle portraits are those of women. He goes to the bottom
of their characters, especially of those who move in the great
world. Beatrix, Rachel Esmond, Becky Sharpe, and Ethel New-

' Philiy, i. 29G.

Thackeray, 487

come are pictures "which will ever remain fresh. And, seeing
that simplicity is a feminine .characteristic, this philosophy re-
quires that we should judge more harshly of women who hide
themselves in a mist of pretension, or involve themselves in the
labyrinths of intellectual mazes, than of men who do so. " Lilies
that fester smell far worse than weeds.^' A woman who is
affected and untrue to herself is a more degraded being than a
hypocritical man, because she sins more deeply against her
nature. This accounts for the apparent spite which Thackeray
always exhibited towards clever women. It was not that he
really hated cleverness and loved stupidity. On the contrary,
dulness was his abhorrence. " There is a quality,^' he said, " im-
pervious to all advice, exposure, or correction ; that bows to no
authority, recognises no betters, never can see that it is in the
wrong, has no scruples of conscience, no misgivings of its own
rectitude or powers, no qualms for the feelings of others, no
respect but for itself The great characteristic of dulness is to
be inalterably contented with itself; it makes men and women
selfish, stingy, ignorant, passionate, and brutal.^' "Above all
things,^^ he says elsewhere, " try to get a cheerful wife ; cheer-
fulness implies a contented spirit, a pure heart, a kind and loving
disposition, humility, and charity; a generous appreciation of
others, and a modest opinion of self. Stupid people — people who
do not know how to laugh — are always pompous and self-con-
ceited; that is, bigoted; that is, cruel; that is, ungentle, un-
charitable, unchristian.^^' It is m"uch more likely, then, that
his weak, affectionate creatures, his tender, generous incapables,
such as Amelia Sedley and Helen Pendennis, were mistakes in
art than mistakes in philosophy. The intellect of woman is not
like that of man : it does not spend itself in brandishing syl-
logisms, or in wire-drawing ideas. It is not distinguished for
epigrammatic acuteness or proverbial sententiousness. It is
rather an intuition of feeling, and expresses itself more in sym-
pathy that may be felt, than in words which may be written
down. Now it is a great problem of art how to represent this
character. As the sculptor has to represent warm, quivering
flesh in his cold, still marble ; the painter the brilliant sunshine
with colours, the brightest of which is blacker than all blackness
when contrasted with the sun's glory ; the musician the wails,
the jubilees, the tender sighs that course through his imagina-
tion with his octave of notes ; — so the poet has to represent the
wordless cheerfulness and unspoken wit of women with the mate-
rials of his art, which are words. How shall he do this ? One
poet adopts one mode of adaptation; another, another; the same
poet varies his method in different periods of his life. We have

- Miscell. ii. 274, iv. 87.

488 Thackeray.

seen that Shakespeare recognised transparency of soul as a fun-
damental trait of women ; yet how differently did he represent
them in the different periods of his art ! At first this transparency
showed itself in an inexhaustible flow of the brightest wit, not
seldom somewhat too highly seasoned, as in Beatrice, Rosalind,
and even Juliet. Gradually he worked away from this mode of
representation, and adopted the method which has given ns his
Desdemona, Miranda, and Imogen. Yet, after all, the literary
ideal of woman does not quite correspond to the living ideal ;.
all that we can ask is, that it should approach as near as
the materials will allow. The true womanly charm is as inde-
scribable as a sweet odour. " Qui pingit florem non pingit floris
odorem." The best flower-painter is he who can associate most
of the sentiment of perfume with the best imitatious of forms
and colours.

Thackeray began with a mistake in criticism; he thought
that a set had always been made against clever women. " Take
aU Shakespeare^s heroines — they all seem to me pretty much
the same, — affectionate, motherly, tender, that sort of thing.^^
He looked at Shakespeare's last creations without examining
how he came to form them. Hence he failed to see that their
equableness and placidity came from fulness, not from emptiness,
and that they had passed through and beyond the stage of clever-
ness and wit. It is as if a young musician, captivated by the
admirable lucidity, the profound harmony, and the planet-like
rhythm of Beethoven's latest music, should begin with direct
imitations of his ninth symphony, or grand mass in D, or post-
humous quartetts, instead of gradually working up to this per-
fection through the simpler methods on which it is built. He
began by trying to give a direct truthful imitation of the womanly
charm, in Amelia Sedley and Helen Pendennis, and was re-
luctantly obliged to abandon, or greatly modify, the method,
which had only resulted in negative characters, feeble and brain-
less. He afterwards infused more wit into them, and succeeded
better. His progress was in the contrary direction to that of
Shakespeare. One developed from Amelia to Ethel and the
Little Sister ; the other, from Beatrice to Imogen. But who wiU
say that the last of the one is equal to the first of the other ?
Thackeray's great successes in female portraits are those where
no theory withheld him from developing their intellects. Becky
and Beatrix are his greatest creations. His good women are
more or less marred by his attempting to give a direct descrip-
tion of an indescribable charm. And the element of contrivance
which he leaves to them, — that artless, negative, evasive cunning
which is natural to women and children, and to the weak in
presence of the strong, — can never, in novels, compensate for

Thackeray, 489

the loss of the positive aggressive artfulness of the woman who
is determined to succeed.

Thus we have his criticism, history, art, and philosophy (if we
may venture to attribute philosophy to a man who so energeti-
cally repudiated the impeachment) all converging to one point,
all aiming at one effect — to bring the heart into the mouth, the
woman into the eyes, laughter to the lips, and the whole soul
and intellect into the countenance ; to reanimate old portraits ;
to make description and dialogue a vehicle for the exhibition of
the soul ; to encourage all transparency, purity, brightness, sim-
plicity, womanliness, even childlikeness of character ; to strip off
the mask that intellect weaves round the soul ; to substitute love
for law, kindness for strict justice ; and to discourage the empty
pretences of improvement or of fancied dignity, which tempt a
man to seem what he is not.

Thackeray was not a preacher to say one thing and do another.
No author, except St. Augustine, ever made a truer or more com-
plete confession of himself to his readers. He was thoroughly
honest. '^ If my tap is not genuine, it is naught,^' he said. He
was so very egotistical that his modesty compelled him to write
under fictitious names. The anonymousness of " the author of
Waverley," or of Boz, was more or less a whim. The pseudonyms
of Thackeray were as necessary to' him as the veil was to Socrates
when he was discoursing to Phsedrus. He felt that he could
preach ; but how should he get into the pulpit in his own name,
and tell his audience that they were all snobs ? A great deal of
management was requisite. He had to speak to them, like
-^sop, in fables ; like Edgar, in Lear^ he chose to minister to
madness in the garb of folly; the cap and bells were to intro-
duce him to court, and to license his tongue. He narrated of
himself what he meant for his audience. He came before them
as a flunkey, as a Jew, as a snob, as a bragging Irishman, to
insinuate to them that they were so many flunkeys, Jews, snobs,
and braggarts. It was only after he had secured attention in his
disguises of Yellow-plush, Ikey Solomons, Titmarsh, Snob, Fitz-
boodle, Brown, Stubbs, Gahagan, and the rest, that he ventured
to appear under his own name in Vanity Fair ; and in the seri-
ous works that followed, his modesty still compelled him to dis-
guise himself in strange names. Pendennis, indeed, came out
in his own name ; but after that he made the same use of the
hero of the tale as Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton has made of Cax-
ton. Pendennis became his editor in the press, and his vicar in
the pulpit. Esmond was an autobiography. Lovel the Widower
is narrated by a Mr. Bachelor. We have, then, two varieties of
masks behind which Thackeray preached. One is the assumed
mask of the Shakespearian fool, by which truth is established by

490 Thackeray.

its contrary, as the drunken helot preached sobriety ; the other
is the scarcely- disguised personality of Thackeray himself. The
two varieties have their points of contact iu Mr. Bachelor and
Esmond.

The masks of the first kind are made somewhat after the
pattern of Shakespeare's witches, or fairies, or Calibans — by ab-
straction. They are imperfect men — human eidola, with some
quality essential to the perfection of humanity obliterated from
their souls. Not that Thackeray copied them from Shakespeare,
or has made them at all like Shakespeare^s negative creations.
The way they grew up in his mind is easily traced. The public
in the fourth decade of this .century was enchanted with pictures
of an impossible world, in which rogues worked villany with the
motives and sentiments of heroes, lied out of love of truth, acted
like profligates out of love of virtue, and like knaves out of hon-
our; where doubt was philosophy, selfishness justice, anarchy
government, and atheism religion. The diseased sentimental-
ity of Ernest Maltravers, Jack Sheppard, and Oliver Twist , set
Thackeray thinking how he could exhibit heroes similar to the
two former, acting not indeed with the approval, but without
the disapproval, of their consciences ; and he soon found a way
of doing it, by cutting out the conscience altogether. As the
French vivisectors extract a brute's cerebellum, or cut out his
liver, and then watch how he behaves in his new condition, so did
Thackeray, by a powerful effort of imagination, represent to him-
self w/zpr in cipled men — men perfect in all their other faculties, but
without the guiding clue of conscience, without the understand-
ing to see that they lacked what other men possessed, and there-
fore without any shame for their defect or their unprincipled acts.
Swift had taught him one great secret of humorous writing — *' the
grave and logical conduct of an absurd proposition.'^ " Given
a country of people six inches or sixt}' feet high, and by the mere
process of the logic a thousand wonderful absurdities are evolved
at so many stages of the calculation/' Thackeray's masks are
similar to Swift's in principle ; but they differ from them in the
negative character of his assumptions. Given a man without
the conception of right and wrong, how will he act and talk?
The kind of solution Thackeray gave may be seen by a short
extract from The Tremendous Adventures of Major Gahagan :
*' I had been lucky enough to render the Nawaub of Lucknow
some trifling service, and his highness sent down a gold toothpick-
case directed to Captain G. Gahagan, which I of course thought
was for me. My brother madly claimed it: we fought; and the
consequence was, that in about three minutes he received a slash
in the right side which effectually did his business. He was a
good swordsman enough; I was the best in the universe. The

Thackeray, 491

most ridiculous part of the affair is^ that the toothpick- case was
liis, after all. He had left it on the NawauVs table at tiffin. I
ean't conceive what madness prompted him to fight about such
a paltry bauble : he had much better have yielded it at once,
when he saw I was determined to have it.^'

When Thackeray had once found out the secret of making
the qualities he recommended conspicuous by their absence, and
thus rendering them desiderata, he made good use of the method.
The Fatal Boots is an example of it ; but it culminates in Barry
Lyndon — a story where the grave irony is so artfully concealed,
that it unites the interest of a romance with the pungency of the
most humorous satire. Barry is more of a real personage than
Gahagan or Bob Stubbs : the windbag which serves him for a
heart is not utterly empty. He has an organ for some natural
affection for his son, like Aaron in Titus Andronicus, But unlike
Aaron, or lago, or Don John, or Barabas in The Jew of Malta,
he has no love for wickedness in itself — no positive faculty for
evil, which gloats over sin and hates virtue. He has a sublime
unconsciousness, which accompanies him through the mazes of
virtue and vice, making him take each as it comes, without being
aware of any distinction between them. It is a rich vein ; and
Thackeray delighted in his power of showing how characters
wanting this or that human faculty would look. The slight
fibre of satire that runs through Esmond is caused by the bland
callosity with which the hero tells of deeds that exhibit his sub-
mission to female influence, his defective views of honour, or the
partiality of his judgments. Nothing can exceed the cool con-
fession tacked on to his powerfully-conceived character of Marl-
borough : '' A word of kindness might have changed my opinion
of the great man, and instead of a satire have drawn out a pane-
gyric." Thackeray's Hibernian portraits are painted on this
principle. Their brag becomes an impotence, an inability to con-
ceive that they can be known as well as they know. It comes not
from imperfect education, but from want of a faculty; it is like
a blind man's denial of colours. In Mr. Batchelor, the narrator
of Lovel the Widower, there is a certain amount of vacuum; not
enough to make him a rascal, scarcely enough to constitute a
snob. He might be taken for something between Pendennis and
Titmarsh, till we find that he hates children, and discover what
he was meant for — a negative character, the same in principle as
Barry Lyndon, but made fit for comedy by the slightness of his
defaults. Elizabeth Prior is another such defective character.
We have a clue to what she was intended for when we are told
that " she was incorrigibly dull, and without a scintillation of
humour." She is something less, not more, than woman.

This kind of character serves as a foil to those in which

4&2 Thackeray.

Thackeray speaks as lie really thinks; just as the fools and
clowns iu Shakespeare^s plays give us the ironic and satirical
counterpart of the serious business. But Shakespeare^s foils are
infinitely varied ; all kinds of contrasts are employed ; whereas
Thackeray seems to know only of one. He sets only the nega-
tive over against the positive, opposes only the empty to the
full, and so gives us but one phase of that great artistic contri-
vance by which Shakespeare attained such magnificent results.
Over against these ironical masks, in which he preaches by con-
traries, by the reductio ad ahsurdum^ — as where he makes Mr.
Snob cut his benefactor because he ate peas with his knife, —
are the characters through which he speaks as he really thinks.
These may be divided into two classes : those which represent
himself as he really was, and those which are portraits of himseK
as he wished to be — literal portraits and ideal portraits. Pen-
dennis is an example of the former kind ; Colonel Newcome, of
the latter. He has given us three principal autobiographical por-
traits, painted at difierent times, and representing three phases
of his mind. Pendennis we may call his phrenological portrait.
It was painted at a period when Dr. Newman's writings, and still
more his deeds, had great influence upon him ; and when his
historical studies, reacting upon a temporary metaphysical turn
of mind, had reduced him to a stage of great intellectual uncer-
tainty, not to say scepticism. In Clive Newcome we have the
reaction of youth and health, of the love of energy, of art, of
beauty, against the pale cast of thought which sicklies over the
portrait of Pendennis. And in Philip we have the final triumph
of muscularity, the victory of the sentiments reinforced by the
flesh over the intellect. It is a sad sight. First we see the
gentle nature going to buffets with itself, its insurgent forces led
on by captains wearing the rival colours of Macaulay, Dr. New-
man, Professor Newman, and a host more. Chaos sits as umpire,
and by his decision embroils the fray. In Clive Newcomers
letter from Rome we see the battle-field, strewn with dead
corpses of the conquered, on whom a handsome funeral oration
is pronounced before they are consigned to oblivion, and room is
left for the empty heart to offer hospitality to their successors.
In Philip we see that Mr. Kingsley has got the vacant throne,
though his tenure of the conscience of the Cornhill preacher is
somewhat threatened by Mr. Lewes's materialism, Mr. Home's
spiritualism, and the kindly epicureanism of old Horace, to whom
Thackeray took more and more in his last years, when he began
to relent from his cruel surgery, abandoned the probe and the
knife, and became a lady's doctor, a minister of bread-pills and
bank-drafts to cases of distress; when he began to protest
against discovery, to reckon it the chief misfortune of a man to

\

Thackeray, 493

be found out, or to be esteemed precisely at his worth, to hate
\dce mainly because it made the conscience so uncomfortable,
and to suspect all virtues that had unpleasant consequences. By
the example of the Little Sister he tries to make lying and rob-
bery in a good cause seem acts of virtue, just as Victor Hugo
does with his Sceur Simplice. His code was tolerant of a little
wrong done to secure a great right. But it never tolerated as-
cetic self-sacrifice. His hatred to Swift comes mainly from the
fact that Swift's married life with Stella was that of brother and
sister. He greets the phenomenon with a howl of execration.
His ideal of love was always somewhat physiological, and never
reached the chivalrous notion of perfect unselfishness. The most
extravagant sacrifice made for it was in his eyes only one side of
a bargain. Love was a price paid, not a free gift imparted. Our
own good, not that of the beloved person, was always supposed
to be its real object ; and a man was conceived to sit down and
calculate his possible gains before making his venture. " 'Tis I
that have fixed the value of the thing I would have, and know
the price I would pay for it. It may be worthless to you, but
'tis all my life to me.''^ He had got aground on the rock of
self; and so he missed the tide that promised to carry him over
the bar of doubt. Whether Denis Duval was to be a fourth
portrait of the writer in a more advanced stage of growth, we
cannot tell. The fragment published displays extraordinary
care, and characters, like those of Agnes's parents, which must
be quite subsidiary to the main business of the plot, are finished
miniatures. In Clarisse's catastrophe we see a version of a
tragical incident which occurred a few years ago in the English
literary world at Paris, interpreted according to the medico-
psychological doctrines of Mr. Lewes. Denis himself was to be
a great muscular sailor, approaching still nearer to Mr. Kings-
ley's ideal than Philip ; and Agnes vvas to be his guardian angel,
just as Laura was to Pendennis. " I might have remained," he
says, " but for her, in my humble native lot, to be neither honest
nor happy, but that my good angel yonder succoured me. All I
have I owe to her ; but I pay with all I have, and what creature
can do more ?" Thackeray in his last work still adheres to his
old heresies concerning love. He exaggerates its part in life;
and he debases its nature by reducing it to a bargain.

The other chai-acters in his novels were modelled after the two
kinds of masks behind which he preached. His good characters
were excerpts from himself, with certain imperfections suppressed,
and certain germs of good developed to an ideal excellence. His
questionable characters were formed upon the model of his ne-
gative masks. His art reversed the old maxim, that "people

^ Esmond, iii. 57.

494 Thackeray.

oftener want something taken away than something added, to
make them agreeable/' His black sheep are made so, not by
the addition of any bad qualities, but by the subtraction of good
ones. We look in vain among them for a strong character — for
iron prejudices, or an adamantine will. There is no unconquer-
able pride, no Satanic love of wickedness, as in lago or Aaron.
There is much good-hcartedness, much desire to do better, all
stopped by an impassable gulf, a vacuum, a nothing. The
barriers which shut them out from goodness are ditches, not
walls ; not alps, or boiling lava-streams, but morasses. They arc
helpless evil-doers, not heroically wicked. Of such great charac-
ters Thackeray had glimpses ; and he cowei^ed before them. He
suspected Marlborough and Swift to be of their number. But
his own villains are well called black sheep. Sheep they are; and
one pities their tremulous helplessness more than one condemns
their black bodies. This rule does not apply to his women ; his
ideal of women was already so negative, he so bowed to Pope's
decision that they have no characters at all, that to make them
wicked he was obliged to add. Subtraction would have left
nothing at all, good or evil. Feminine softness and simplicity
could be changed to their opposites only by the addition of firm-
ness of will and activity of intellect. On this principle he con-
trasted Becky and Amelia in Vanity Fair. Afterwards, he never
created such unmixed characters, but generally strove to give
his good women some share of firmness and intellectual strength.
There is a great deal of hard metal in Rachel Esmond, — of un-
relenting pride, of silent vindictiveness, of unsleeping jealousy,
of determination to command. So there is in Madame War-
rington. Helen Pendennis is nearly as soft as Amelia; but
Laura's heart is begirt by many excellent gifts of head ; while in
Ethel Newcome intellect, haughtiness, high spirits, resumed their
proper position in the literary ideal of womanhood. Perhaps
Thackeray's women might be ranged in two columns, one headed
by Becky, the other by Amelia. In Becky's column the intel-
lect and will is the central organ ; in Amelia's, the heart. The
two types gradually run together by borrowing of each other,
till at last, in spite of Thackeray's predilections, taste conquers
theory, and head with additions borrowed from heart proves
itself more truly feminine than heart with additions borrowed
from head. In Becky, Blanche, Beatrix, Ethel, we see a parallel
to Amelia, Helen, Rachel, and Laura; and in Ethel, the lineal
descendant of Becky, we recognise a much truer woman than
in Laura, the lineal descendant of the ultra-feminine Amelia.
Only contrast the two in the critical incidents of their lives —
Ethel refusing to marry Farintosh, and Laura urging Pen to
marry Blanche. The moral we draw is, that when affections are

Tliacheray. 495

superadded to intellect the intellect knows well what to do with
them ; but when intellect is superadded to heart the heart does
not understand how to handle the edged tool, and makes a sad
mess with it.

We will hazard another remark upon the charming portrait
of Beatrix Esmond, upon which Thackeray has lavished all his
art, and all his subtle knowledge of the women of the great
world. It will be granted that, when a poet is discovering what
his characters must say, he wdll let them say it in their own
words; whereas, when he is inventing what they shall do in
order to conform to his theory, the easiest plan is to describe
them. The dramatic method is proper for objective, self-de-
veloping art; the descriptive method for subjective theoretic
art. Now it seems to us that, if we divide the passages which
relate to Beatrix in Esmond into those which deal with her
dramatically and those where gossip babbles about her, we
shall find two Beatrixes ; one the delightful vision which laughs
and dances through the story, the other an attendant wTaith, a
malignant double which haunts her, but is not herself, to whom
we must attribute much that we can scarcely believe of the real
Beatrix. Of course, any woman can sink to any depth of degra-
dation ; that is a fact not to be questioned. The question here
is, whether the fall of Beatrix is artistically consistent, whether
it is the legitimate result of the germs of self-will, giddiness,
jealousy, obstinacy, selfishness, and love of admiration, w^hich are
innate in her disposition, or whether it is a foreign addition
plastered on her to justify Thackeray^s theoretical spite against
women of intellect ? Was this theory so strong in him as to
force him to calumniate the finest creation of his genius ? His
anxiety to justify himself shows that he had misgivings about it.
He tells us that pride will have a fall ; and yet he owns that
Beatrix was not so proud as her mother. And then she only
followed the example of the women of the Castlewood family.
Again, the apologetical confession put into her mouth when
dying, in The Virginians, is not only somewhat at variance with
what is told us at the end of Esmond, but bears all the marks of
an after-thought interposed to render probable something that
was felt to sin against artistic credibility. It is hardly natural,
moreover, to make the brilliant and experienced woman of the
world the dupe of the dissipated young Prince. And as Bea-
trix's worst vices are plastered on by historical addition, so are
the intellectual qualities of Rachel. She comes out dramatically
as a woman of more solid judgment, of greater stability and
depth, than her daughter. But when we are told that 'Trix
was not so incomparably witty as her mother, we can only reply
that she shows herself incomparably more so. The poet was

406 Thackeray.

still groping in the dark for the just mixture of head and heart
proper for ideal womanhood.

We see, then, how the characters in Thackeray^s novels are
confessions and exhibitions of his own inner world of thought and
feeling — of his soul, his ideals, his loves and his hatreds, his con-
victions and his doubts. And the circumstances with which he
surrounds his characters are only memorials of his varied expe-
riences. He gives us pictures of his school-life at the Charter
House, or, as he calls it, the " Slaughter House,'^ or " Grey
Friars" School, where he educates Pen and Clive and Philip, his
three representatives. We have reminiscences of his countrj^ and
college life in Pendennis, of his German experiences in Barry
Lyndon and The Newcomes, of his Parisian experiences in Philip,
of his connection with the literary world of Fraser's Magazine in
Pendennis, and with the artists in The Newcomes, In all these he
attempted to make his pictures literally true to nature. When
accused of traducing his art by his pictures of the loose lives of
men of letters, he replied, " My attempt was to tell the truth,
and I meant to tell it not unkindly. I have seen the bookseller
whom Bludyer robbed of his books ; I have carried money from
a noble brother man of letters to some one not unlike Shandon
in prison, and have watched the beautiful devotion of his wife
in that dreary place." All three representatives of himself. Pen,
Clive, and PhUip, begin life in affluence, lose their money, and
for a while are forced to support themselves precariously on lite-
rature or their art. Philip even begins the world with the pre-
cise sum which is said to have been Thackeray's fortune, 30,000/.
But there is one event in his life, the blow which deprived him
of his wife's society, which had a much more important effect on
his writings. It was his great sorrow. He never alludes to it
exce]5t once, in a note at the end of his interrupted Shabby-yen-
teel Story ; yet his works are full of it. Milton once or twice
mentions his own blindness, and then passes on, forgetting self
in his epic inspiration. Thackeray never mentions, and yet
never forgets, or allows his readers to forget, the cloud that
darkened his life, and tinged all his feelings with a funereal
hue. Like Hamlet, he had seen a ghost; and, though he
swore all his senses to secresy, he could not conceal the trans-
formation of character which had been worked in him by the
visitation. The meditation of his life was concentrated on one
hopeless feeling, without antecedent or consequent, the shadow
of which made the rest of his existence a weary, stale, flat, and
unprofitable blank. His misfortune made him look upon the
world with the eye of a humourist who had nothing more to
do than to deliver his brief message and die, and planted the
suspicion in his mind that in the secret closet of all woebegone

Thackeray, 407

men a skeleton sometliing like his own was hanging. To this
we trace much of his peculiar humour.

Satire is the offspring of indignation ; but humour is the
child of melancholy. The first stage of humour begins with
that mental and physical lassitude which succeeds acute sor-
row, when the man, having strung his feelings beyond their
usual tension, and exerted his thoughts beyond their common
pitch, must either sink into inanity, or seek relief in some
sportive change.

rtXXoTf n^v re yoo) cfiptva repTrofiai, aXXore S' avre
Trauo/xai* al'^'qpos be Kopos Kpvepoio yooto.

Niebuhr accounts for the gay and bantering tone of Cicero^s
speech pro Murcena, delivered amidst the harassing anxieties of
Catiline's conspiracy, by the levity with which a great statesman
tarns to private matters, unable to conceive how a person to
whom they are all in all can feel offended at the natural expres-
sion of a good-natured contempt. Hamlet, just harrowed by the
Ghost's revelation, bawls out to his companions in the most
boisterous way. Cruelty generally conceals itself behind a ludi-
crous and grotesque way of regarding the horrors it inflicts. "I
deny that nature meant us to sympathise with agonies,^' says
Charles Lamb ; " those face contortions, retortions, distortions,
have the merriness of antics. Nature meant them for farce."
Pain and sorrow gradually fade away in humour :

" Men who wear grief long
Will get to wear it as a hat, aside,
AVith a flower stuck in it."

The transition maybe difficult to explain, but it is a fact. Every
cause has more than one effect. As the reaction of too keen a
joy causes tears, so does the reaction of grief cause a kind of
moody merriment as one of its effects :

" Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows,
Which show like grief itself, but are not so."

Humour in its first stage is one of these attendant shadows. It
is the act of the heart seeking to suppress the first feelings ex-
cited by overwhelming thoughts, and to substitute for them the
secondary feelings which arise with the reaction of lassitude. It
is the reality which the affectation of Byron strove to imitate
when it confessed that the prizes of life were not worth living
for, and therefore gave itself up helplessly to a hatred of man-
kind, pretended to have found out the hoUowness of every aim
of life, and resigned itself to be the slave of vices which had
become hateful through satiety. Swift was a truer exponent of
it ; but even in his hands it appeared to Thackeray quite heart-
less and wrong.

498 Thackeraij.

The second stage of humour cultivates these secondary feelings
no longer in order to suppress the sterner thoughts for which
they were substituted, but to excite the like feelings by remi-
niscence and association. After the mind has descended from
painful excitement to a kind of weary levity, it can reverse its
course, and ascend again through something akin to this levity
to something resembling the original excitement. This reversed
motion is the second degree of humour. Its aim is to restore,
in a reflective form, those same feelings which were so painful in
their direct action as to force the mind to take refuge in levity.
If we consider what it is from which we usually try to escape by
this issue, we shall find that it is not the vicious feelings, such
as hatred, envy, and revenge, which, however painful, give us a
morose and gloomy joy as long as we care to brood over them,
but those bitter-sweet feelings which the conscience does not con-
demn, though in their first access they are too keen to be long
endurable, — pity, sorrow, awe, and fear. Cruelty is humorous,
not to escape the morose pleasure of inflicting pain, but to escape
the accompanying disapprobation of the conscience. Its humour
is of the first stage ; it is intolerant of the second, which would
tend to renew the pricks of conscience. "VVe may define humour,
then, in its second and proper stage, to be an ironical method of
restoring, through the imagination, those tender and pathetic
feelings which in their first visitation over-excited the soul, and
soon brought on the reaction of an almost delirious lassitude.
It is an attempt to go up the same ladder which w^e came down ;
to reascend through levity to pathos, as we descended from
pathos to levity.

There is an intellectual as well as a moral humour. As faith,
overwrought, unbends itself in the irreverent familiarities of a
Neapolitan mob, so is it possible to reverse the motion, and to
reascend to faith through the ironical mockeries of an apparent
scepticism. An example of this process is afforded by the Book
of Ecclesiastcs, which dull commentators have regarded as a mere
cold, materialistic outpouring of Sadducism. The same learned
pundits would doubtless gather from Erskine's humorous remark
on a miser who had died worth 200,000/., " A pretty sum to
begin the next world with," that he believed ghosts bought and
sold in limbo.

It is hard to imagine that the connection between any parti-
cular painful feeling and its humorous reaction depends on a pre-
established harmony of things, and not rather on an accidental
association of ideas, deriving its power from the organisation of
the individual mind. Humour, on this view, is a personal thing.
AVhat is humorous to one man may not be so to another. He
who is dull to a species of hiunour which affects the majority,

Thackeray, 409^

may be fully alive to another species which, most men have no
taste for. Humour reveals the man and his individual feelings,
and has little to do with logic or dialectics. But it can never be
selfish. Humour and the selfish passions — pride, conceit, vanity,
an exaggerated sense of dignity, — and the desires built upon them
— ambition, covetousness, and self-seeking, — are mutually destruc-
tive of each other. Pride cannot laugh at itself without ceasing to
be pride ; and the sense of personal dignity has found its true level
when it can treat itself with easy contempt. The second kind
of humour, that ironical levity by which we seek to restore the
original feelings, is still more inconceivable as a stepping-stone
to selfishness. Fancy founding pride upon self-ridicule, or vanity
upon a confession of one's foibles ! Humour, then, can never
be the foundation of offensive egotism, though the humourist
must be allowed to make people look through his eyes, and in
the simplicity of his heart to preach a novel view of the world
and of society, and to broach new plans for making mankind
happy. Any more concentrated form of selfishness is hateful
to him; since his method is only applicable to feelings of tender-
ness, melancholy, and sorrow, to the sentiments that respond to
death, or misfortune, or the instability of happiness, or the ex-
tinction of love. Selfish motives and selfish vices have nothing
in common with these feelings, and therefore excite in him no
interest, but rather indignation and abhorrence; whereas the
aberrations of weakness and tenderness stand in no such contra-
diction to his feelings, and are treated with great indulgence.

It may be asked how the pathetic feelings come to be so keen
as to be intolerable, and yet so attractive as to make us seek to
restore them. It is because they open out to us a dim view of an
unknown abyss, of which they seem to be the echoes and vibra-
tions. Through them our souls are brought into almost con-
scious contact with the infinite. This it is which gives them
their insufferable keenness and overwhelming force, and at the
same time brings them into direct relation with humour, the
essence of which, as Coleridge points out, consists in confounding
together all finite things, in making the great little and the little
great, in order to destroy both, and to exhibit them as equal
nothings in comparison with the infinite. It is also the reflection
of the infinite in these feelings which draws us back towards
them after we have done our best to escape from them, which
wins us over to love them in spite of their painfulness, and causes
us to return to them by the same path that led us from them.
Not that humour seeks to restore these feelings in their direct
energy, so as once more to pierce the heart and prostrate the
nerves with terror and pathos. It seeks to bring them back
modified and mitigated by the humorous levity which succeeded

VOL. IV. I I

500 Thackeray.

them in the reaction of lassitude, and to restore pathos and
terror under the veil of the ludicrous images which the cunning
bravado of a light-headed exhaustion first imposed upon them.
The preacher, on the contrary, seeks to excite these feelings in
their native directness. Thackeray seems to have forgotten this
distinction when he describes the humorous writer as one who
"professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your
kindness ; your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture ; your
tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy ;''
as one who " comments on all the ordinary actions and passions
of life, and takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher."
The preacher and the humourist both profess this craft; but
one tries to pierce the flesh with fear, and to make men fix their
eyes on the Infinite, while the other only tries to awaken an
indirect reminiscence of the Infinite, through the disproportion
of his language and imagery to the finite things of which he
professes to treat. What is the Cervantic method, speaking of
ridiculous things in the gi-andest phrases, or Swift^s method,
speaking of grand things in the lowest terms, but a perpetual
tacit allusion to a common measure, kept in the background,
unseen but felt, which equalises all finite magnitudes by the
overwhelming disproportion of its transcendent infinity?

But if Thackeray overlooked the distinction between the
preacher and humourist, he did not forget the difference be-
tween the two kinds of humour. In a remarkable conversa-
tion between Pendennis and Warrington^ the two men symbolise
the two degrees in question. Pen, who has tried every thing,
like Solomon, and has found the vanity of all, breaks out
into the listless sceptical humour, which neither hopes, nor
cares, nor believes. Warrington, struck down by a sorrow es-
sentially different from Thackeray's, but yet similar to it in
some of its effects, nurses his grief, and makes it the kindly
mother of an equitable view of mankind. The one seeks
to escape the presence of the Infinite, through a humorous
view of life ; the other, by a somewhat similar view, to keep the
Infinite ever in mind. "We set up,^* says Pen, "our paltry
little standards to measure Heaven immeasurable, as if, in com-
parison to that, Newton's mind or Shakespeare's was any loftier
than mine .... measured by that altitude the tallest and the
smallest among us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base,
that we should take no account of the calculation, and it is
meanness to reckon the difference." Warrington answers,
" Your figure fails there ; if even by common arithmetic we can
multiply, as we can reduce, almost infinitely, the Great Reck-
oner must take account of all ; and the small is not small, or
4 Pendennis f ii. 231-236.

Thackeray. 5(fk

the great great, to His infinity/^ Pen pretends to descend from
the Infinite to the world, and to find all human dilSPerences piti-
fully base. Warrington ascends from these differences to the
Infinite, and finds that their distinctions are even enhanced by
the process. One divided by infinity is nothing ; but one mul-
tiplied by infinity is infinite. It is curious that, though Thack-
eray adopts Pen as his representative, he should make Warring-
ton the representative of his peculiar humour. Perhaps the
explanation is, that he is both Pendennis and Warrington, and
that the two interlocutors represent two phases of his mind be-
tween which he oscillates. Thus the Pendennis speaks in him
when he says, " What a good breakfast you eat after an execu-
tion ! how pleasant it is to cut jokes after it, and upon it !"
while the Warrington speaks when with keen irony he seeks to
reproduce in his readers the horror he felt at the " blood tonic''
of a public hanging. We may remark, in passing, that if any
one wishes to see the illogical nature of humour, he has only to
read the paper entitled Goiiig to see a Man hanged, where he
will find an argument against executions, founded on these three
propositions : 1 . Every man in the crowd was as sensible, and
politically as well educated, as myself. 2. The execution pro-
duced on me the most profound feeling of shame and horror.
3. Therefore executions are to be abolished, because they pro-
duce no feeling at all but one of levity on the unthinking and
unreasoning mob. The writer does not seem to have remem-
bered that this levity might be in their case what it was in his
own — the reaction against a feeling of horror too overwhelming
to be borne for many seconds in its direct incidence.

Thackeray calls himself a week-day, and not a Sunday,
preacher. Perhaps the reason is twofold : first, that his style i?
humorous, seeking to attain a moral end in a roundabout instead
of a direct manner; and secondly, that be does not meddle imme-
diately with the highest things. He leaves the Sunday preacher
to speak of God, and contents himself with the lower line of
enforcing the social virtues. These virtues hold a middle place
between the infinite and the finite ; they have sufficient magni-
tude to obliterate by comparison all differences between mere
material interests, and to put to shame all the pretensions of
rank, wealth, fashion, talents, where virtue and love are wanting,
— all the objects for which men usually strive, to the neglect of
the heart, and of the love of wife and children. And then when
he has done this he turns round upon the affections themselves,
and declares them also to be tainted with vanity. Love dies, or
corrupts into hatred. Hope satisfied is disappointment. "Oaths
mutually sworn, and invocations of heaven, and priestly cere-
monies, and fond belief, and love, so fond and beautiful that it

502 Thackeray,

never doubted but that it should live for ever, are all of no avail
towards making love eternal; it dies, in spite of the banns and
the priest.'^ " Vanitas vanitatum ! which of us is happy in this
world? which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?"
Sorrow inspired him with the mood of Shakespeare's Richard IL,
and made him sit and talk of graves. It gave him the same
humorous conception of death as an antic, scoffmg at state,
grinning at pomp, contemptuously granting a few hours for
conceit to strut through his part, and then boring through his
castle-wall with a little pin. It made him wash to throw away
tradition, form, and ceremony, and to realise, ideally, Herr
Teufelsdrockh's hypochondriac fancy of a whole court stripped
naked, and dukes, grandees, bishops, generals, anointed presence
itself standing straddling without a shirt on them, leaving the
spectator suspended between laughter and tears. But amidst
these grim fancies he remembered how the banquet of fruits
tasted before it w^as turned to dust and ashes ; how the music
sounded before the sweet bells were jangled ; how the brave
garments glistened before the moth had fretted them. In the
midst of the fever which embittered his fine taste for pleasure,
furred his tongue, and dulled his appetite, he babbled of good
cheer. And the cheery pipe of the brave Epicurean ceased not,
though he was crushed and maimed under the heels of a gigantic
calamity.

His sorrow, again, working on a nature already, perhaps, in-
clined to give to the sentimental side of humanity too wide a
part in life, and leaving too little room for energy, thought, and
skill, made him see the image of his own woe in all other sorrows,
and attribute them to similar causes. As there is a selfishness of
love, so there is a selfishness of grief. A man may be so ena-
moured of his own sentiment as to love being in love more than he
loves the person with whom he is in love ; and he may feel grief
so grievously as to transfer his sorrow from the object for which
he grieves to his grief itself; he may pity himself more than he
pities his lost friend. Thackeray^s married life was, we believe,
eminently happy ; and the blow which deprived him of the society
of his wife was one which could only make him pity her and love
her the more. Still the effect of a loss thus blamelessly inflicted
was materially the same as that of less innocent blows. And
Thackeray, sitting by his lonely fireside, might by a small effort
of imagination put himself into the place of those who were as
hopelessly injured, but by others' faults instead of by the unre-
spective course of nature. Shakespeare shows us Lear attributing
every misery to unkind daughters. He might as naturally have
exhibited Hecuba or Niobe seeing in every woe the image of sons
and daughters untimely snatched away. He might in all three

Thackeray. 508

cases have gone a step further back, and made Lear, Hecuba, and
Niobe find the common source of every sorrow in having sons
or daughters at all, or, having them, in loving them too well.
A person in a similar situation, contemplating his misery only,
and abstracting all consideration of the once dear objects for
whicli he mourned, might easily work himself up to hate, not
those objects, but his connection with them — to hate having had
a wife, or children, whose loss could entail such a sorrow. All
affection involves this possibility of wretchedness. Having thee,
says Shakespeare, I have all men's felicity —

" AVretclied in this alone, that tbou may'st take
All this away, and me most wretched make."

An ascetic nature would be led by such a course of thought to
crush all earthly love. Thackeray Avas led by it to his theor}^ of
mitigated affections. He took the sting out of happiness by putting
it on low diet. He guarded against the violence of the reaction by
curbing the original energy. He indulged in a melancholy and
listless view of life, which made him represent a second marriage
as the nearest approach to contented felicity possible on this side
the grave. In his novels, the first ventures of passion are gene-
rally unfortunate ; most of his favourite characters either love or
marry the wrong person, and then find their comfort in the com-
pany of a child to cheer their widowhood, or, like Warrington,
gaze wistfully upon some unattainable Laura and veil their heads
in the mantle of aimless endurance, or else find contentment in a
new marriage from which they do not expect too much. Middle-
aged love was for him the happiest because the most measured.
For this cause his novels seldom end with the marriage of the
young people, but pursue their career beyond, to show how ill-
assorted are these unions of youth. He even advises us to drown
our first loves like blind puppies ; he hints that the edge of this
keen passion should be blunted on two or three transitory attach-
ments before it is fitted for domestic use. Thus the head of a
house at Oxford, some twenty years ago, would get an under-
graduate to gallop his hack all the morning before he would
trust himself on its back for his afternoon ride.

It was not only the violence of passion which he feared as
tending to an incontrollable reaction, but the blindness which
such a passion generally produces. He is fond of painting the
miseries threatened by ill-assorted unions of families, — such as
that of the Pendennises with the Costigans, or with Fanny and
her relations, of Warrington with his wife's family, of Clive and
his father with the Campaigner's household, of Philip with the
Twysdens. For this reason there was one thing which he detested
worse than blind passion as a matchmaker — money. For passion
he had pity and forgiveness ; but a purse-inspecting, lack-love.

504 Thackeray.

mismatching Hymen was for him, next to the gallows and war,
the wickedest thing he could think of. Passion might ferment
into love ; but what relation could there ever be between love and
money ? He forgot that money was a mere accident, and that it
is not the money that a man marries, but the woman who has it ;
and he forgot the self-adapting powers of the human heart. And
so, for a very different reason, he scouted, with Johnson, the idea
that matches were made in heaven. The old moralist thought
that almost any man and woman might make themselves com-
fortable together; and that, when it was so easy for people to sort
themselves, it was mere irreverence to bring doAvn a god in a
machine to do it for them. But Thackeray considered matches in
general so ill-sorted that it was as blasphemous to give heaven
the credit of the business as to give it credit for the horse -dealing
at Tattersairs. He approved of matchmaking -, no woman worth
a pin is not a matchmaker, he often says. But the most mortal
of sinners is the mercenary matchmaker, whose voluntary victims,
in a disgusting passage oi Philip, he compares to the victims
of passion, and calls the '^ true unfortunates.^^ He kept a
very hot hole in his Inferno for unbelievers who pronounced it
unadvisable to marry without a thousand a year, and made
several of his favourite heroes marry on nothing ; but they are
always saved in the nick of time by the death of a rich uncle or
by a legacy. He gives no illustration of the fate of imprudent
couples whom no such luck attends.

We have said enough to show with what native simplicity
Thackeray exhibits his inmost soul and experiences in his cha-
racters, in the circumstances with which he surrounds them, in
his humour, and in his moral judgments and opinions. And he
reveals his intellect quite as clearly as his heart. We may per-
haps call his a proverbial mind. The proverb is the verdict of
popular feeling and shrewd common sense on a given line of
conduct, pronounced without a thought bestowed on other lines
for which an opposite decision might be more fitting. To the
over-venturesome, the proverb-monger whispers " a bird in the
hand is worth two in the bush,'' without a misgiving of en-
couraging that over-caution to which he shouts out the next
minute, "nothing venture, nothing win.'' Proverbs are but
extemporaneous, and therefore unarranged, ejaculations of cau-
tion or encouragement. They run in couples, pointed against
the two contradictory extremes to which any true principle
may be pushed. Our old writers were fond of keeping up a
game of repartees, dialogue-wise, in proverbs. This could not
be done with principles, which take the middle line; though their
abuse may be corrected by their attendant proverbs, their true
meaning cannot be contradicted without sophistry. There is no

Thackeray, 505

current objection to tlie principles, '^ do as you would be done
by/^ and " render to each his due," except in the world of cheats
and pickpockets.

If this is the nature of proverbs, a man's mind may be called
proverbial when he has a shrewd, observant common sense at
the service of a precipitate judgment — when he is so preoccupied
by the case in hand that he has no eyes or ears for exceptions,
but chivalrously challenges all the world to dispute the sove-
reign claim of the clear truth which for the moment enthrals
his soul. Sufficient for the occasion is the truth thereof. He
throws himself into the controversy of the hour, takes the popu-
lar side with his whole soul, and devotes all the brilliancy of his
wit to stating its principles in the most axiomatic form. He is
not careful of contradicting himself. Relying upon the people,
he thinks it next door to blasphemy when one man brings his
poor logic into competition with the inspirations of the great
heart of humanity. He habitually makes the reason a parasite
of feeling, devotes the brain to the service of the heart, and is
ashamed at no lapse of logic which is defensible by sentiment.
He treats reason as the Philistines treated Samson ; he sets it
to grind, or brings it out to make sport. He suspects intel-
lectual superiority to be rather a stumbling-block than a spur to
jog-trot goodness, and only to be valued as lending a tongue to
geniality, nature, cordiality, freshness, and honest impulsiveness,
wherewith to defy, ridicule, and lampoon their opposites. Or he
takes another road, and views every thing from the standpoint
of the most wide-awake self-interest. He rejoices in exhibiting
art, reason, genius, respectability, in undress and slippers, to the
confusion of prim people. He recklessly shows up his enemies,
himself, and his friends, who are duly grateful. He loves to
contradict some respectable old platitude, some self-evident truth
to which he has discovered an exception. "It is an error,''
says Thackeray, " to talk of the simplicity of youth. No per-
sons are more hypocritical, and have a more affected behaviour
to one another than the young. They deceive themselves and
each other with artifices which do not impose upon men of the
world; and so we get to understand truth better, and grow
simpler, as we grow older."

The two classes into which Thackeray's writings and charac-
ters divide themselves are a natural result of the polarity of the
proverbial mind, which evacuates the flats in the middle, and
occupies the heights on each hand. Hence also comes his multi-
fariousness, which is the despair of critics. He has no care to
be consistent. His soul is a crystal of many facets, each reflect-
ing truly and brilliantly the scene lying in its axis. His hospit-
-able brain is tolerant of contradictions. He not only sees that

506 Thackeray,

a fact is a fact, in spite of want of logic, but he also takes his
generalisations for facts, and exalts his proverbial maxim, flashed
out from two or three instances, into a general principle, and so
passes from the truth that contradictory -looking facts arc pos-
sible together, to the fiction that contradictory principles can
coexist, — a fiction which gradually undermines all allegiance to
intellectual truth, sets up sincerity as more true than ortho-
doxy, squeezes all dogma out of religion, all certainty out of
j)hilos^phy, all principles out of politics, and all form, ceremony,
degree, and order out of society. Then he more easily pardons
sins against truth than against beauty, and so cuts away the old
ground of respectable criticism. The literary honours he seeks
are tears and sympathy with his sorrow and his mirth. He
would be the toast-master to direct the sentiments of mankind,
rather than the philosopher to guide their belief. With logical
sharaelessness he mixes a certain want of shame for aesthetic
weaknesses which minds less tender seek to conceal. With his
contempt for critics, he makes no secret of his annoyance at
criticism ; yet, with his want of fixed principles, he often adopts
for the moment those of the critic who inflicts the wound. Or
he staves-off" criticism by being beforehand with it, anticipating
grumblers by himself saying what he knows they will say.
" Pereant male qui ante nos nostra dixerunt \" Nothing is easier
than to criticise Thackeray's weak places ; but nothing is harder
than to say of them what he has not somewhere said before us.
He seeks indulgence for his sin by a previous confession of it,
and puts on the penitential sheet before he utters his lampoons.
He is sorry that such a set has always been made against clever
women, and then he creates a Becky and a Beatrix ! He tells
us that a public school ruins a boy body and soul,^ and then
dwells lovingly on his Charter-House life. He abuses Dickens
and Ainsworth for erecting thieves and prostitutes into heroes
and heroines by an ex-parte statement of their virtues, and then
praises Oliver Twist almost as pious reading. At the end of
Pendennis he tells us how the hero, that is himself, became a
member of parliament. In The Newcomes that dignity is achieved
by the Colonel ; but in Philip, after the Oxford failure of 1857,
he makes the cynical but truth-speaking old lord wish some
tyrant would shut up all our "jaw-shops," and gives the sour
vintage as a prize to the wicked Mulatto. To make a catalogue
of his various contradictions would be an endless task, and would
not help us much to discriminate his character, since similar
contradictions are common to all comprehensive intellects. We
call Shakespeare "myriad-minded," because "millions of strange
shadows" attended on him. Instead of the one shade which

» Miscell. iv. 241.

Thackeray. 507

common mortals cast, lie, but one, could '^ every shadow lend."
But he combined all their tones into one mighty volume, where-
as in Thackeray we seek in vain for any such combining force.
The first principle in Shakespeare's mind was that which gave
the sceptre to " degree, priority, and place, insistence, course,
proportion, season, form, office, and custom in all line of order."
The first effect of Thackeray^ s philosophy is to undermine the
supremacy of order and ceremony because of the abuses to which
it gives rise. He hated the cut-and-dry in the state, in spciety,
or in the mind. He had not much sympathy with the starched
ruffles of the Elizabethan epoch. He liked the loose extempo-
raneous epigrammatic flashes of Anne's time, or the mythical
wildness of the youth of Henry V., the young prince and Poins,
of which period he once contemplated writing a stor}^ He be-
lieved in wild oats. He thought, with old Elowerdale in the
London Prodigal j that " they who die most virtuous have in their
youth lived most vicious." Shakespeare believed in them too,
— as a possibility, not as a necessity. He did not take a re-
formed prodigal as his universal type of the manly character.
Thackeray made his wild-oats theory almost into an axiom,
whereas Shakespeare only made it one among the numberless
colours which he employed in painting his great panorama of
humanity.

His dislike to the cut-and-dry, which led him to prefer the
literature of the age of Anne, — Addison, Steele, Fielding, and
Swift, and the '^cheery charming gossip" of Horace Walpole,
leading us through his "brilliant, jigging, smirking Vanity Fair,"
together with HowelFs Letters, Montaigne's Essays, French lite-
rature generally, and, above all, Horace, — did not prevent him
from being a man of artificial mind. However much he railed
at the forms of polite society, he understood them better than
the forms of humanity. Compare his backgrounds with George
Eliot's. George Eliot has nothing more busy, nothing more
true to life, than that wonderful picture of Waterloo without the
fighting, which we have in Vanity Fair. Yet, when we come to
look at it, it is but a busy mass of camp-followers. All the arti-
ficial combinations of men — a regiment, a school, a college, an
academy of arts, a boarding-house, a dramng-room, ambubaiarum
collegia, pharmacopolse — he paints them all to perfection; but
not a populace, not a mob, not the society of a country town or a
village, not a civil or political society, not even a family. Where
George Eliot would have given us the movements of the Brus-
sels mob and of the native society, Thackeray only gives us the
pulsations of the hearts of the officer's wives and servants, and
of runaway soldiers and their sweethearts. What idea have
we of the domestic economy of the Pendennises, or Newcomes,

508 Thackeray,

or Twysdens, comparable to that which George Eliot gives us of
the miller on the Floss, his children, his wife, and sisters-in-law,
or of the Bedes, the Poysers, or the Casses ? Thackeray is in
his glory in the drawing-room, the club, the studio, the ball-
room, at Baden Baden, or at the West-End of London ; where
George Eliot is almost as clumsy as a swan on a turnpike road.
He hardly recognised the fact that the literary, artistic, learned,
and polite society which he enjoyed so much was only the bloom
of a vast tree, the top-story of an enormous basement, all held
together by the gradation, law, and order, which his philosophy
unduly depreciates. He was somewhat like the rustic who sat
on the branch that he was sawing off.

His artistic forms were determined by his vocation as
preacher and humourist. As preacher he was not subject to
the law actum ne agas, but had a perfect right to iterate his
lessons. " Oh, my beloved congregation, I have preached this
stale sermon to you for ever so many years." As humourist
he was not bound to be consecutive ; for digression is the very
form and vehicle of humour, which is not found in orderly
arrangement, but in extraordinary comparisons and juxtaposi-
tions of the great with the little. He reconciled the somewhat
inconsistent tasks of humourist and stoiy-teller in three different
ways. The most artistic is that used in Barry Lyndon, Esmond^
and Lovel the Widower, where the hero is also the nan-ator. For
in an autobiography the author does not profess to deal only with
the events, but also with the impression they make on him :
his reflections are perfectly in place ; they are no impertinent
interferences, but integral parts of the original design. In
his other novels he either acts as chorus in his own person, or
employs some fictitious character as narrator and chorus. In
Vanity Fair he uses the former method, and asks leave, in-
troducing his characters, to step down from the platform and
offer his explanations about them. Otherwise, he says, you might
fancy it was I who was sneering at devotion, or laughing good-
humouredly at a drunken villain. Where he uses a fictitious
person like Pendennis to narrate for him, the effect is improved ;
Pendennis and Laura, like George Eliot's village or Florentine
communities, form a kind of background to the piece, and serve
to connect the plot with the preachings.

Several causes conspire to make Esmond his best novel. We
have already noticed the value of its autobiographical form. An-
other reason is its thoroughly literary character. Alone of his
larger works it was not given to the world in monthly parts, but
all at once. Its laborious imitation of the style of the writers of
Anne's age, its circumstantial exactness to the costume, the man-
ners, and the feelings of those times, were voluntary fetters, which

Thackeray, 509

only increased the agility and grace of the athlete. It will not
be so valuable to the antiquarian of the next century as a contem-
porary painting ; but it will be proportionately more valuable to
the poet as a picture of human nature. Pegasus never exhibits
his mettle so well as when he is checked with the brake; nothing
makes the reader yawn more than an art which flew down the
writer's mouth while he was yawning. Labour sharpens the
mind and polishes the wit; its benefit is not confined to the
single detail on which it is expended ; it reacts on the workman,
and through him on his whole work and all its parts. To aim
at clearness of expression is also to seek clearness of thought,
logical arrangement of parts, and unity of the whole. Esmond
has Thackeray^ s best plot, some of his best characters, his most
subtle reflections, his most delicate pathos, and his most poetic
language. There are single sentences in it which contain more
poetry than all his ballads, the best of which are the funniest and
most nonsensical.

Vanity Fair is his most objective work, because none of the
characters in it are portraits of himself. Dobbin, perhaps, like
his more finished successor Colonel Newcome, is a character par-
tially copied from the simpler and less vigorous side of Thackeray^s
own nature. But he was never meant for a representative of the
author, like Pen, Clive, and Philip. The other characters of the
book are painted not from the author^s self-consciousness, but
from imagination not over-much disturbed by theory, and em-
ploying its extraordinary powers of observation with Shandean
minuteness. Here his knowledge of the world comes out in
great force, reflected in Becky^s tact. He is said to have been
not remarkably gifted with this quality; and in painting it
so well, therefore, he gave proof of being able to appreciate what
he was unable to assimilate. But it is one thing to write,
another to act on the spur of the moment. Thackeray com-
plains that his inward counsellor was a tardy Epimetheus, and
that his best witticisms were generally too late.

He was chary of his ideas. As Cervantes traverses the same
ground for the second, third, or fourth time, if he can find so
many improved methods of going over it, so Thackeray gathers
up the ideas he has wasted, or has not made the most of, and
works them up again. His successive portraits of managing old
women — Miss Crawley, Lady Castlewood, Lady Rockminster,
the Baroness Bernstein, and Lady Kew — are well worth studying,
as varied developments of a single idea. He used a character or
an incident as a musician uses a tune ; he repeated it, or varied
it, or inverted it, as his fancy moved him. We see the last
method employed in the inverted correspondence between the
parentage of Esmond and that of PhiUp Firmin — and between

510 I'hackeray.

Esmond^s renunciation of his mothers rights for fear of dispos-
sessing Frank Castlewood, and the little sister's renunciation of
her OAvn rights for fear of dispossessing Philip.

We fear we have said too little on Thackeray's comic power ;
indeed, we have said nothing about it, except what is implied in
our remarks on his humour. And, perhaps, the less said the
better. " Qui ejus rei rationem quandam conati sunt artemque
tradere," says Caesar in Cicero, " sic insulsi exstiterunt, ut nihil
aliud eorum, nisi ipsa insulsitas, rideatur." Neither will we
praise the beauty of his language in our rough periods. Nor will
we speak of his drawings. But there is one subject on which we
are constrained to say a few words — his religious tendencies.
There can be no doubt that he once tried to be a Catholic. " I
cannot believe,'' he makes Esmond say, ^^that St. Francis Xavier
sailed over the sea in a cloak, or raised the dead. I tried, and
very nearly did once, but cannot." Comparing this with similar
passages in Pendennis and The Neivcomes, we cannot doubt its
being a confession both of his tendency and of the obstacles which
checked him. At some period of his life, and in accordance with
the nature of his mind, more prone to believe in persons than
principles, he was led by some that he loved or admired to wish
to believe in the old religion; but then came in the wearied
scepticism which he has painted in Pendennis^ too exhausted to
distinguish between substance and accident, between the eternal
truths which the new convert must necessarily accept, and the
extraneous remnants of ancestral tradition which old believers
naturally cling to, without having the right to impose them on
the proselyte. No, he seems to say, truth is truth ; a chain is
no stronger than its weakest link; a system is not more true
than the most extraneous doctrine which it allows and encourages.
If St. Francis's cloak-boat founders, St. Peter's bark is wrecked
too. In relation to the Infinite, both are alike, and it is mean-
ness to note the difference. Hence he contracted a great and
increasing dislike for the Catholic system, upon which he stuck
all the aberrations of casuists, all the impossibilities of legends,
all the false opinions of extravagant theologians, all the political
insincerities and crimes of plotters and conspirators for rehgious
ends. The result was to turn our creed into a monstrous in-
credibility, which he very properly refused to accept. But while
he was thus unfair to the system, he took care to paint portraits
of its profcssoi's for which Catholics owe him some gratitude.
He says that among them alone can real devotion be found, or
real interest in doctrine for its own sake be met with. The por-
trait of old Madame do Florae is as good and true as any Catholic
could have painted; and its effect is enhanced by a compari-
son with her pendants, Lady Walham and Lady Jane Crawley.

Thackeray, 511

Father Holt, witli all liis absurd plots, is a mncli more reput-
able figure than the Tushers, Sampsons, Honeymans, and Hunts,
who represent the clergy of his own communion. With his
usual luck, his liking went one way and his judgment another.
Those who consider his philosophical judgment stronger than his
insight into character will do well to constitute him a new wit-
ness for Protestantism.

We end as we began ; on whichever side we look at Thacke-
ray, we see that his great characteristic was the manifestation of
soul. Every thing in him was subservient to this great object of
his life and art. Yet, with all this consistency, a thorough want
of unity is every where noticeable. He divided his soul from his
reason, and his reason against itself. His soul, numerically one,
set about its task of self-manifestation in all simplicity and
purity. Yet, rejecting the primacy of reason, it could arrive at
no fixed criterion, no unassailable principles of judgment. It is
weakly attracted by other souls; it clings to persons, to friends, to
any one who says a kind word, does a kind deed, smiles or laughs
or weeps w^th it. Hence it is at the mercy of impostors and
pretenders, believing every man till it finds him out, and then
believing him in nothing; exhibiting first an impetuous credu-
lity that accepts the heresy for love of the heretic, and then an
obstinate unbelief that rejects the truth out of disgust for the
orthodox offender; walking through the world as a chameleon,
borrowing its tints from the colours which surround it, from the
hues which happen to be in the air, without possessing any sove-
reign principle which enables it to choose what is true, and to
reject what is false and unreasonable.

But throughout these changes Thackeray in the main pre-
served his ethical uprightness, and kept his heart pure. Though,
under the influence of the muscular school of religion, he in his
later days showed a tendency to excuse little wrongs done to
secure great rights, his lessons in other respects were all on the
side of virtue. He never wrote what could raise a blush on
the most modest face. He ever loathed such geniuses as Ptous-
seau or Richardson, who could paint so accurately the struggles
and woes of Eloise and Clarissa, and the wicked arts and triumphs
of Lovelace. Like Chiron, he was a master of our school of
gentlemen, the inventor of a music to charm our ears, of a medi-
cine to heal some of our lighter wounds. Like Chiron, too, he
was great, but not complete — a union of discords not harmonised
by any triumphant, dominant note. The fantasia he played to
us was brilliant and various, pathetic and comic by turns. The
figure he displayed to us was a noble one, full of strength, and
refined as far as art could polish it. But still —

** Stat duplex, nuUo completus corpore, Chiron."

[ 512 ]

INDIAN EPIC POETKY.i

The comparison of the forms which epic poetry has developed
in different ages and countries, while it reveals their various
individual characteristics, yet leads us to the conclusion that
there are certain general features which will be found when-
ever and wherever such poetry arises. All these general cha-
racteristics may be stated in the one proposition that the epic,
rightly so called, is essentially popular, the work of unlearned
men for unlearned men. Its birth and home is amongst the
lower orders, as is or was the case with the Servian ballads, the
Finnish runes, the Danish and Swedish popular lays, and the
songs of the Faero islanders ; or else, it is essentially the poetry
of a warlike aristocracy, intended for their praise and amuse-
ment, which is the case of the Chanson de Roland and the Old
Norse Eddaic songs. As war was in olden times more or less
the occupation of at least every free-born man, it is sometimes
difficult to say whether the epic songs celebrating its exploits
are more especially the property of the people at large or of
their noble chieftains. Instances of this difficulty are fur-
nished by the German Nibelungen, the Romances of the Cid,
and the Iliad. But one thing is quite certain. The poets,
whether they belong to the lower ranks or to the aristocracy,
are, like their audience, unlettered men, better able to wield
the sword, or maybe in some instances the implements of
agriculture, than the pen.

Hence it folloA7s that all genuine epic poetry is at its begin-
ning composed in the popular language, and handed down by
oral tradition. Afterwards, when it has been written down, it
may become the object of more or less artificial and learned
imitation ; and then it may make use of an antiquated form of
speech; nay, occasionally even of a foreign language, as is done
in many medieval epics, based on popular tradition, but written
in Latin.

Poetry can only be listened to in the intervals of serious
activity. Such moments of repose are necessarily short. Festi-
vities and banquets are not every-day occurrences ; and even
when they arrive, but a small part of their 'duration can be
occupied in listening to the minstrel. Necessarily, therefore,
the poems recited must be short, as the time as well as the
patience of the hearers would soon be exhausted. The ballad

' Le Mahubhurata^ traduit completement pour la premiere fois du Sanscrit
en franoais par H. Fauche. Vol. I. Paris, 1863.

Indian Epic Poetry, 513

is consequently the natural and original form of all epic poetry.
Wherever in modern times we have been able, so to speak, to
lay hold on the epic in the act of its generation, we have
invariably found short poems, which might be easily connected
with larger wholes, but which, as a matter of fact, have not been
so connected. Witness the Scandinavian and Servian songs,
and the Finnish Kalevala, which has been constructed by the
Swedish editors out of a number of small pieces ; and Mac-
pherson's ingenious forgery must give way before the genuine
Ossianic poetry, as contained, for instance, in the Book of Lis-
more, and consisting of course of short pieces. It stands to
reason, therefore, that the Eddaic songs about Sigurd present a
more original form of the Teutonic epic than the long contin-
uous poem of the !Nibelungen, and that the Poema del Cid is
founded on short romances about the Spanish hero, similar to
those that we still possess. In the same manner, we should be
justified in concluding that the Iliad must have been preceded
by short ballads on Achilles and the siege of Troy, and that
the same would hold good of the Chanson de Roland, even if
traces of the existence of such shorter poems had not been
pointed out, in the former case by Lachmann, and in the latter
by Fauriel. We need scarcely remark that, when such popular
songs are once in existence, it may be possible, even perhaps
toitkout the help of writing, for a poetical genius to plan and
execute a composition on a larger scale, — a so-called epos. Such
a poem may^ of course, hold every possible relation to the old
ballads, from merely stringing them together, as in the case of
the Kalevala, to such an almost complete unity as the Odyssey
seems to present; and when once constructed, by whatever
means, it will call forth naturally other works of a similar cha-
racter. What we must insist upon is only this — that the origin
of all these long works is invariably to be traced to short
ballads.

The characteristics we have ascribed to epic poetry imply
that in the vast majority of cases it would only originate and
thrive in a semi-civilised society. Such a society is almost
always habitually engaged in warfare. Hence epic poetry is,
as a rule, extremely warlike, the only notable exception being
presented by the Finnish Kalevala, the peculiarity of which in
this respect is to be accounted for by the position of the nation,
the Swedish rule having forced the Finns long ago to abandon
war and take to peaceful occupations.

If we now turn to the two great works which are for us the
representatives of the achievements of the Hindus in this de-
partment of literature, namely, the Mahabharata and Rama-
yana, we shall be struck at first sight with the remarkable con-

514 Indian Epic Poetry.

trast they present to the epic characteristics laid down above.
For nearly the only point in which these Indian productions
would seem to agree with the European epics is their strongly
warlike spirit. A great battle between the Kauravas and Pan-
davas, two mythical races of kings, forms the centre of the
Mahabhrirata ; and the subject of the Rrimayana is the war of
Kama against a superhuman monster, Ravana. We shall pre-
sently have to limit our assertion, and shall point out that, in-
timately blended with the heroic enthusiasm, there is in these
great poems a spirit of piety and religiousness which shows
that other besides warlike influences have been at work in
the creation of them. But in spite of these other currents of
thought and feeling, the stir and activity of military life is
visible every w^here and decidedly paramount. Even the gods
act in a martial way. Not only do they provide their favourite
heroes with celestial weapons, but Indra [Zeus], for instance, is
busily engaged in fighting the demons, and S'iva encounters
Arjuna in the shape of a mountaineer. The Brahmans them-
selves share this fierce spirit. Paras'urama {i. e. the Rama of
the hatchet), a descendant of the holy sage Bhrigu, and son of
the hermit Jamadagni, is a good example of this. The king
Arjuna had been received hospitably by Jamadagni ; but in
return for this goodness he had carried off the calf of the sage's
sacrificial car. Paras'urama, incensed at this injustice towards
his father, slays Arjuna, and Arjuna's sons in turn kill Jama-
dagni, whereupon Paras'urfmia vows and executes severe ven-
geance on all the Kshattriya (warrior) caste. 2 " Having greatly
and piteously lamented his father in manifold wise, he of great
penance performed for him all the sacrificial ceremonies ; Rama,
the conqueror of the towns of his foes, burned his father in fire ;
and he promised to destroy the whole caste of warriors. Full
of anger and of strength, the powerful hero having taken his
weapon, killed all the sons of Arjuna, like unto the god of
death. And the Kshattriyas who were their followers, them
also Rama crushed all, he the best of champions : twenty-seven
times emptying the earth of all Kshattriyas, he, the lord, made
five lakes of blood in Samanta-panchaka. And then by a
great sacrifice the son of Jamadagni satiated the gods, and
gave the earth to the officiating priests. Thus there arose
enmity between him and the Kshattriyas dwelling in the
world, and thus the earth also was conquered by Rama of
unmeasured splendour."

Strange deeds these certainly for a member of the Brah-
manic caste, and the son of a holy anchorite ; and we may well
maintain that epic poetry Avhich attributes such deeds even to
2 Mahabharata, b. iv. 20100.

Indian Epic Poetry, 515

priests is intensely warlike. But, on the other hand, this story
of Paras'ununa (who, hy the bye, is entirely diiFerent from the
hero of the Ramayana) evidently is intended to teach a severe
lesson to the men of the military caste ; inasmuch as it records
the fearful vengeance which an injured Brahman can bring
upon his enemies.

And this leads us to the second peculiarity of the Indian
epic, namely, its religious, or, to speak more correctly, priestly
and hierarchical character. Every where the duties of religion,
sacrifices, respect for the Brahmans, &c. are inculcated in it,
and its heroes — at least most of them — are as eminent for their
piety as for their bravery. In the episode of Savitri, which
forms part of the third book of the Mahabharata, the character
of Satyavat, who is the husband of the princess just named, and
is evidently intended as a paragon of all possible excellences, is
thus described by Narada, the divine messenger :^ " He is like
Vivas vat [the sun] shining, equal to Vrihaspati [the priest of
the gods] in wisdom, like the great Indra a hero, like the earth
patient, in benevolence like unto Ratidevathe offspring of San-
krita, by his own accord, pious, speaking the truth, as S'ivi the
king of Us'inara, as the magnanimous Yayati of friendly aspect,
like one of the two As'vins [Dioscuri] in beauty, is the strong-
son of Dyumatsena. He is a self-conquering and mild hero ; he
is truthful, holding his senses in subjection. He is amiable, not
given to discontent, modest, and resolute; and for ever there is
in him justice and unwavering firmness. Thus is he described
by the sages rich in penance and virtue.'' Narada goes on to
state that, but for the circumstance of his being destined to an
early death, there would be indeed no fault in this excellent
young hero. It is true this is only an ideal ; but some of the
great personages of the Indian epic, such as Rama and Yudhi-
shthira, the latter one of the heroes of the Mahabharata, present
similar features, as far as they can be made consistent with their
warlike exploits. That such ideals of character, as well as that
of the avenger Paras'urama, were conceived by Brahmans there
can be no doubt After this, it is not surprising that the In-
dian epic should have long didactic passages, chiefly intended
to inculcate the peculiar Brahmanical philosophy, and due obe-
dience of the other castes to the priests. Nor shall we feel
much astonishment when we hear that the Mahabharata is ac-
tually looked upon as a religious book, and that it is described
in the introduction in the following manner :* " The twice-
born,'^ who knows the four Vedas, with the Vedangas and

w

3 in. 16672. * i. G45.

* By " twice-born" are meant the three upper castes, as receiving their second
spiritual birth by the study of scripture.

VOL. IV. m m

516 Indian Epic Poetry.

Upanishads,^ but does not know this story, cannot be a wise
man. From the sin which a Brahman commits during the
day, through the action of the senses, he is free if he recites the
Mahabharata at evening twilight ; from the sin which he com-
mits in the night by act^ thought, or deed, he is freed if he
recites the Mahabharata in the morning." Similar promises
abound throughout the work. Thus, at the end of the episode
of the deluge, it is said that whoever is a constant hearer of it
" he will go to heaven in happiness with all his wishes fulfilled."
No wonder that the Mahabharata should claim for itself equal
authority with the Vedic writings :" " The wise man Avho re-
cites this poem, and those who hear it, reaching the station of
Brahma, obtain similitude with the gods. For it is united with
the Yedas, and the highest means of purification. In it the
way to riches and pleasure is entirely propounded, and the
highest wisdom is in this very holy epic. If a wise man recites
before noble, liberal, truthful, and believing men this Veda
of Krishna [name of the author, otherwise Vyasa], he shall
enjoy riches. Even from the guilt of the murder of an unborn
child a man is released hearing this epic, even though he be a
fearful sinner.'"

How entirely the peculiar religious notions of the Brah-
mans are blended with the idea of epic poetry, is clearly
seen from an amusing attempt at translating the beginning
of the Iliad into Sanskrit, which is to be found in the
Journal of the German Oriental Society.^ It was composed
by a learned Hindu at the request of a European scholar,
and runs thus : " "Why has the noble son of Paliyas, Akhil-
lisa, engaged in meditation, formerly uttered a curse against
the Akhayas, he the proud sage, saying : All of you shall
meet your end in battle, you wicked ones. These bodies
of yours shall be the food of jackals, dogs, and birds, and
your souls shall depart to the nether world.'' In spite of
the names, few of us would have recognised the fierce son
of Thetis in this disguise, using curses instead of Aveapons.
But nothing could be more truly Indian ; and the Hindu poems
abound in stories of miraculous vengeance inflicted on evil-
doers by the mere word of a holy anchorite. It is certain, then,
that, however much the Kshattriya caste contributed to the
Mahabharata and Ramayana, the Brahmans have had a great
deal to do with their composition. If, therefore, the Mahabha-
rata states of itself that it was composed by Vydsa, a son of the

« These constitute (with the Brahmanas) the scripture of the Hindus, the
Vedas themselves being collections of hymns, the Vedi'mgas works illustrating
them, and the Upanishads philo.sophical treatises.

' i. 2299. 8 vi. 108.

Indian Epic Poetry. . 517

sage Paras'jira, and first recited by the Brahman Vais'ampayana,
we may take this, upon the whole, as a fair representation of
the part played by the priestly caste in originating the epics.
The groundwork must undoubtedly have been due to the min-
strels of the warrior caste ; but it has been overlaid and to a great
extent intrinsically altered by Brahmanic additions and modi-
fications. In so far as this has been the case, the originally
popular and warlike character has been obscured, and other
features have been substituted which separate the Indian epic
from the similar productions of other nations.

As with the spirit, so it is with the form of these Indian
poems. "What more striking contrast could be conceived than
that between a short ballad and the bulky volumes which go
by the name of the Mahabharata ? The Sanskrit text of these,
without a single note, occupies four large closely-printed quartos ;
and M. Fauche, the French translator, informs us in his preface
that he hopes to finish the translation of the entire work in
sixteen volumes, of which the only one yet published contains
599 pages octavo of closely-printed matter. According to a
statement in the Introduction of the Mahabharata itself,^ the
work contains 100,000 s'lokas or double verses, counting all the
episodes, but only 24,000 without them ; that is, even in this
latter shape it would be more than twice as long as the Iliad,
whilst in its integrity it would have ten times the bulk of the
Greek poem, — an estimate which is rather under than above
the truth. Similarly the Ramayana occupies in Gorresio's edi-
tion five large octavo volumes. It seems, indeed, as if the
Hindus in their literary productions wished to rival the dimen-
sions of the gigantic nature by which they are surrounded.
Under these circumstances, it is natural that the range of sub-
jects, especially in the Mahabharata, should be almost unlimited.
The poem itself boasts of the fact.^^ " This is a treatise on
riches, this is the great treatise on law, this is the treatise on
love, spoken by the Vyasa of unmeasured wisdom. There is
no tale on earth unless it be derived from this poem, as there
is no support of the body unless derived from food. On this
poem the best poets exist, as the worshippers desiring success
exist on the favour of Is' vara [S'iva].''

These statements are perfectly true. The whole legendary
history of India is to be found in the Mahabharata. The very
story of Rama, which is the subject of the second great epic,
occurs with numberless other episodes in the third book.^^ The
well-known poem of " Nala and Damayanti" is but an episode
of the same book. Another is the " Bhagavadgita/' a long ex-
position of the Yaga philosophy, in the sixth book.^^ j^ ^g jj^_

» i. 100. '» i. 646. »' 15873. ^^ 33q^

518 Indian Epic Poetry,

troduced in the strangest possible manner. Arjuna, being ready-
to figbt, is suddenly struck by the thought that his adversaries
are his relations, and that therefore he ought to spare them.
Krishna, his charioteer, takes this occasion to expound to him
the doctrine of the eternity and unity of all spirits, their inde-
structibility, and their identity and final absorption into the
divine spirit, of which he (Krishna) declares himself the special
incarnation. This philosophical disquisition takes place on the
chariot, in view of the battle-field, where the armies are already
in action. Arjuna, being satisfied at last that his enemies are
as eternal and in substance the same as himself, then goes for-
ward into the battle. Any thing more utterly at variance with
probability and epic usages than this lecture, in the midst of
the din of a battle, could scarcely be conceived ; whilst the
subject-matter of the episode, however beautifully treated, is
equally foreign to the genius of epic poetry. Nor is this an
isolated case, for in the twelfth book w^e have three long didactic
treatises in verse, — the " Raja-dharma, or duty of kings," the
•• A'pad-dharma, or rules of conduct in misfortune,'' and the
" Moksha-dharma, or rules for obtaining release from finite
existence.''

The Mahabharata may therefore fitly be described as a kind
of encyclopaedia of mythology and philosophy, consisting of
numberless poems, strung together by, and interwoven with,
the story of a battle between the Kurus and Pandus. That
such a production is to the highest degree artificial, and the
work of the learned, in this case of the Brahmans, needs no proof.

An equally remarkable characteristic of the Hindu epic is
the use of a language different from that of the nation at large.
The inscriptions of king As'oka, the object of which was the
spread of Buddhism, were addressed to the people ; and from
this fact, and from the circumstance that these inscriptions are
not written in Sanskrit, but in different kinds of Pali (a lan-
guage derived from Sanskrit in the same way as Italian is from
Latin), we must conclude that in As'oka's time {i.e. 250 B.C.)
Sanskrit w*as a dead language. Now it can easily be proved
that both the Mahabharata and Ramayana are, in their present
form at least, much younger than As'oka. This results from
the mention in both of them of nations with which the Hindus
could only have become acquainted long after Alexander (330).
The Greeks themselves are frequently mentioned, under the
name of Yavana. This word is derived from the Greek name
of the lonians, "Iwi/e?, ^Id{f)ove<;, and was used at an early
period throughout Western Asia as the name of the Hellenic
nation (Hebrew Yavan^ old Persian Yauna). Tlie theory }>ro-
pounded by Lassen, that it sometimes signifies other nations,

Indian Epic Poetry, 519

— Arabs, Chaldeans, &c. — seems to rest on no foundation A^hat-
ever. A king of the Yavana is mentioned as taking part in
the great assembly of princes that were suitors for the hand
of the heroine of the Mahabharata;^^ and in the decisive battle
there appears on the side of the Kurus king Sudakshina of
Kamboja (a region in the Penjab), together with the Yavanas
and S'akas.^* These and similar passages evidently prove that
at the time when the leading story of the great epic — for they
occur in the body of the poem, not in episodes only — received
its present form, the Hindus were perfectly familiar with the
name of the Greeks, and regarded them as sufficiently near to
themselves to take part in feasts and battles occurring in India.
Such a view could of course only arise after Alexander, when
the Greek kings of Syria, Bactria, and the Penjab, made them-
selves known and felt as powerful rulers. Lassen, indeed, as-
sumes that some account of the heroic battles of Thermopylas,
Salami's, and Plata3a, might have reached India ; but we must
not forget that although to us, who look back upon and are
conscious of their vast consequences, these events appear all-
important, they would not present that appearance to the con-
temporary Asiatic nations. A local defeat of the Persian arms,
which left the Persian empire as a whole intact and pov/erful,
is not likely to have spread the name and renown of a little
tribe on the shores of the ^gean as far as India. We have,
however, still more positive proof that the Yavanas mentioned
by the Mahabharata are the successors of Alexander, in a pass-
age of the first book :^^ "The prince ofSauvirawas killed by
Arjuna. He whom even the mighty Pandu could not conquer,
that king of the Yavanas was conquered by Arjuna. The
prince of Sauvira, Vitula by name, very strong, and always
defiant against the Kurus, was killed by the wise Partha
[= Arjuna]. Arjuna overcame with his arroAVS the Sauvira
prince. Sumitra, desirous of battle, known by the name Datta-
mitra, accompanied by Bhimasena, and with one chariot Arjuna
conquered ten thousand chariots and all the western tribes."
From this passage it results that there is in the poet's mind an
intimate connection between the Sauvira (a people near the
Indus) and the Yavanas, if indeed, they are not absolutely the
same. One prince of these united Sauvira- Yavanas is called
Sumitra, otherwise Dattamitra, and has been identified by
Lassen with the Greek king Demetrius of Bactria, whose reign
began at about 200 b.c., and who afterwards made great con-
quests in the Penjab. This conjecture is confirmed by the fact
that the scholiast of Panini knows a locality Dattamitri (a), of
which the inhabitants are called Dattamitriya ; and a Pali in-

« i. 7020. '^ vi. 590. '^ 5534.

520 Indian Epic Poetry,

scription lately found calls these Datamitiyaka Yonaka,^^ — the
Greeks of Dattamitra. Evidently Demetrius, like other Greek
kings in Asia, founded a city called after himself He is not
the only Greek king mentioned in the Mahabharata. In the
second book^^ one of the heroes is told by Krishna : " The
lord of the Yavanas who rules Muru [Marwar] and Naraka, a
king of infinite strength, holding the west, like Varuna, he the
powerful monarch Bhagadatta, is an old friend of thy father's."
Bhagadatta, " given by Bhaga" (the sun), seems to be a transla-
tion of 'A'TroW6hoTo<^, " given by Apollo," the name of one of
the Greek Penjab kings about 160 b.c. It is clear that some
time must have elapsed before these historical monarchs could
become so mixed up with the ancient mythological tales of the
Hindus. In one of the passages quoted above, the S'akas occur
along with the Greeks as taking part in the great battle. They
are frequently mentioned, and especially with the Tukharas or
Tusharas, who fought beside them and the Greeks in the great
battle.^^ They are the nomadic tribes called by the Greeks
Sacae and Tocharge, who were originally the inhabitants of
the plains beyond the laxartes, but who overran Iran about
130 B.C., and afterwards also invaded the west of Hindostan.
It is possible that the Hindus might have known these tribes
when they still inhabited the northern plains ; but when they
appear as taking part in the battle fought in the midst of
India, the most natural supposition is that there had been
wars between them and the Hindus, which could only have
happened after 130 b.c. "We have most probably a trace of
the Romans in the twelfth book,^y where S'iva causes a fear-
ful being, called Virabhadra, to come forth out of his mouth.
" Virabhadra sends forth from the pores of his body [roma-
kupebhyo] the Baumyas, the lords of hosts. These hosts were
like Rudra, terrible, of terrible strength.'' Ruma, indeed, is a
district not far from Ajmer ; but it is not likely that the inha-
bitants of this insignificant spot should be intended rather than
the great conquerors of the west, whose country is otherwise
known to the Hindus as Romaka.^^ In an episode of the Ma-
habharata^^ we find even mentioned along with Yavanas and
S'akas another nomadic tribe, the Hunas, evidently the white
Huns, who in the course of the fifth century of our era devas-
tated Persia and, it appears, also part of India. It is scarcely
probable, though barely possible, that they should have come
under the notice of the Hindus before that time, seeing that
the Greeks and Romans, who were much better acquainted

'6 See Weber, Indische Studten, v. 150.

" V. 578. '8 ^i_ 3297. 19 10304.

*° Journal of the Asiatic Society of Great Britain^ xx. p. 383. " i. 6685.

hidian Epic Poetry » 521

Avitli Turan than the Indians, never mention them. Be that,
however, as it may, sufficient reasons have been adduced to
prove that the Mahabharata, such as we have it, is considerably-
younger than king As'oka (250), and therefore belongs to a
period when Sanskrit had long ceased to be a spoken language.

The same must be said of the Raihayana. The references,
indeed, to foreign nations and recent events are more rare in it ;
but this is easily explained by the fact that southern India was
the scene of Rama's wars, so that there was less occasion to
mention events happening on the outskirts. Nevertheless the
Yavanas and S'akas appear in connection with each other
(S'akan Yavanamis'ritan, "Y. mixed with S/'), as powerful
nations ;*' and lest it should be objected that this passage
stands in an episode, they appear again in the fourth book^^
and apparently in the immediate neighbourhood of India, if not
in India; for they are placed between the Gandahra (Penjab)
and the Odra (Orissa). That at least the Greeks would not be
thus introduced before Alexander, we have shown above, and a
confirmation is afibrded by the fact that the town Demetriea,
founded by Demetrius of Bactria, is mentioned also,^* in the
form Dandamitra, an evident corruption of the older form
Dattamitra. These facts are sufficient to show that the Ramd-
yana, like the Mahabharata, received its present form at a time
when Sanskrit was extinct.

To sum up our preceding remarks, we may say that the
epics of India, though, on the one hand, they are not lacking in
the warlike spirit so characteristic of this kind of poetry, are_,
on the other hand, artificial creations, of immense bulk, of a
strongly sacerdotal character, and written, in part at least, in
a language no longer spoken by the nation.

The question now presents itself: How is this state of mat-
ters to be explained ; and what means have we of tracing the
origin of these vast compositions to the simpler songs which,
unless the analogy of all other epic poetry is entirely mislead-
ing, must certainly have preceded them.

In comparing the epic poems with the oldest monument of
Indian literature, the Rigveda, we find great differences be-
tween the tAvo. Already the language of the epics is much
more modern, having exchanged many of the ancient words

221.55,20. 23 44^13.

2^ iv. 4320. Gorresio, following, it would appear, the majority of Mss.,
puts here in the text "strinam s'okavahan sthanan dattam Indrena xushyat^.,"
which he translates by " la sede dolente che Indra irato assegno alle donne ;"
but in his note he confesses that he knows nothing further about this limbo of
ladies. The reading of codex G, rejected by him, is evidently more ancient,
'*the country of the women (Amazons), the country of the Pahlavas, Dand&,-
mitra, and Arundhati ;" although we do not know what the latter word is to
.mean here, as it generally signifies one of the lunar constellations.

522 Indian Epic Poetry,

for new ones ; it is poorer in forms, more regular, and although,
upon the whole, simple enough, yet more polished than that of
the ancient hymns. The Rigveda, except in the tenth book,
does not yet seem to know the institution of castes, which is
frequently mentioned in the epics, and gives them much of
their peculiar colour and character. Most of the hymns ap-
pear to have been composed in the Penjab, whereas in the
Mahiibhrirata and Ramriyana the scene is the middle or even
the south of India. The whole social state represented in the
Rigveda is very simple ; and its warriors, *' desirous of cows,"
battling about them with each other, and invoking their gods
to bestow them, present a strange contrast to the Brahmans
and anchorites of the epics, fighting by words and curses ra-
ther than weapons, engaged in superhuman efforts after holi-
ness, and lost in the mazes of pantheistic speculation. It is
true that instances of the peculiar Indian philosophy appear in
the tenth book of the Rigsan'hitri ; but in general the religion
of the hymns is very simple, a worship of the shining gods of
heaven, of the bright fire, of the healing waters, — accompanied
by a dread of the powers of darkness and evil. Of the three
gods most commonly invoked in the hymns, one, Mitra, seems
to be altogether forgotten in the epics ; and if Agni, the god
of fire, and Indra, the thunderer, are still most zealously wor-
shipped in the epic times, yet their character is in many re-
spects altered, and a race of new gods has arisen above them.
Brahmfi, "the grandfather of the world/' the creator, has grown
from the Brahmanas-pati, "lord of prayer, '■' of the Rigveda,
who does not occupy any very high position, into a universal
power over all gods. Vishnu, of whom Krishna in the Mahabha-
arata, and Rama in the Ramayana, are incarnations, is indeed
mentioned several times in the hymns, but it is as a minor
deity, while S'iva's name does not even occur. Yet in the epic
these three dominate and are more powerful than Indra, who
of old was the supreme chieftain of the gods. These and many
other differences show that there is a wide gap between the
Vedic times and the epics.

Nevertheless, as might be expected, connecting links are
not wanting. The Indian nation was, after all, the same people
in both periods; and the traditions and facts of the Rigveda,
although altered and even disfigured, frequently reappear in
the epic. We will give a few instances of this. One of the
most important points in the Vedic mythology is the combat of
Indra, the god of thunder, with the demon Vritra (the con-
cealer) or Ahi (the serpent, Lat. anguis). It is the subject of a
magnificent hymn in the first book of the Rigveda (32) : —
" I will praise the exploits of Indra, which the bearer of the

Indian Epic Poetry, 52S

thunderbolt achieved of old. He killed Ahi, he brought out the
waters, he opened the quick torrents of the mountains. He
killed Ahi that lay before the mountain ; Tvashtri (the divine
artist) made for him his praiseworthy thunderbolt ; like lowing
cows the waters ran quickly flowing towards the ocean. When
thou, 0 Indra, didst slay the first-born of the Ahis, then didst
thou destroy verily the charms of the charmers, then bringing
forth the sun, the sky, thou surely didst not meet an adversary.
Indra killed the Vritra of Vitras, he broke his shoulders by the
thunderbolt with a mighty blow; like stems broken by the

hatchet, thus lies Ahi upon the ground As he lies there,

like a river poured out, the delightful Avaters pass over him ;
Ahi fell down at the feet of the waters which with might he
had imprisoned. The mother of Vritra has fallen, Indra inflicted
[the blow of] his weapon on her from below. Above was the
mother ; beneath, the son ; the demon lies, as the cow with her
calf," &c. Vritra is here represented as a demon withholding
the rain from the earth, and thereby enveloping the sun and
the sky in darkness, the mountains being apparently intended
for the clouds. The killing of this demon is described as an
old exploit of the god ; but at the same time it Avas only the
" first-born of Ahis" that was thus killed. This circumstance,
and the frequent use of the present tense, show that the poet
was still quite conscious of the original meaning of the myth, and
that in any thunderstorm passing before his own eyes he recog-
nised the old battle fought over again. In the following episode
from the Mahabharata, this consciousness is entirely lost, and
the destruction of Vritra appears as a single isolated fact in
Indra' s life. The tale is besides full of strange incidents, very
different from the noble simplicity of the hymn just quoted.
•' There were," it says,^^ " in the first age of the world fearful
Danavas (Titans), longing for battle, Kalakeya by name, most
terrible hosts. They, gathering round Vritra, uplifting many
kinds of weapons, assailed from all sides the gods, and Indra
their chief. Then the gods were bent on the destruction of
Vritra, and with Indra at their head they went to Brahma.
When the supreme lord saw them standing all with their hands
folded, he spoke to them : I know, 0 ye gods, what is your
errand. I will give you a counsel, whereby ye shall kill
Vritra. There is a great sage, by name Dadhicha, of noble dis-
position. To him go ye all in a body and ask for a boon; he of
virtuous mind will grant it with delighted soul. Him you
must address all in a body, if you wish for victory : ' Grive us
your bones for the welfare of three worlds.' He, laying down
his body, will give you his bones.'^ This strange counsel is car-

25 iii. 8660.

^jHH^

524) Indian Epic Poetry.

ried out. The gods find Dadhicha in lils retreat in the wood
resounding with the humming of bees and the song of the
cuckoo, where buffaloes, boars, and deer live, unscathed by the
tigers. The sage, " shining brightly like the bringer of day,''
grants the request of the gods, dies of his own accord, and
Tvashtri (Vulcan) makes of his bones the thunderbolt. *' Then
Indra, holding the thunderbolt, protected by the strong gods,
attacked Yritra, who stood covering heaven and earth, pro-
tected on all sides by the Kalakeya of large body, with their
arms uplifted, like unto mountains with their peaks. Then
there arose a great combat of the gods with the demons at a
moment striking the universe with fear. Of swords flashing,
swung, and struck against each other by the arms of the heroes,
there was a tumultuous sound as they fell upon the bodies ; and
the earth was covered with heads falling from the sky, as with
palm-fruits broken from their stalk. The Kaleyas, with golden
armour, with clubs as weapons, poured down upon the gods
like mountains the forests of which are on fire. As these
powerful demons rushed onward in their arrogance, the gods
could not withstand their strength, but overcome by fear they
ran away. When the thousand-eyed destroyer of cities saw
them flying, and Vritra gaining strength, he felt great anxiety.
Por a time the god Indra was shaken by fear ; but quickly he
addressed himself to Vishnu for protection. When the eternal
Vishnu saw Indra filled with anxiety, he put his own strength
into him, increasing his vigour. Thereupon the hosts of the
gods, beholding Indra preserved by Vishnu, put all their own
power into him, and so did the Brahma-sages. Indra restored
by Vishnu, the gods and the blissful sages arose powerful. But
Vritra, knowing that the lord of the gods stood before him
in strength, sent forth loud roars, and by his roar the earth and
the regions, and the air, and the sky, and the whole ether were
shaken. Then the mighty Indra, in great confusion hearing his
loud and fearful howl, overwhelmed with fear, cast his thun-
derbolt to kill him. And struck by Indra's thunderbolt the
great Titan, wearing a golden garland, fell as formerly Man-
dara, the best of high mountains escaping from the hand of
Vishnu. Thereupon, when the lord of Titans was killed,
Indra full of fear ran on to hide himself in the sea ; through
fear he did not think of his thunderbolt, which had slipped
from his hand, nor of the dead Vritra. And all gods were
glad, and all the sages in their joy praised Indra, and rapidly
having approached the Titans, they killed them all, who were
confused by the death of Vritra."

The reader will observe in this epic version the prominent
part borne by the pious sages and by Vishnu, the magical

Indian Epic Poetry, 525

power ascribed to religious devotion, and the absence of any
indication that Vritra was originally a serpent. This combat of
the god of thunder and celestial light with the dragon is one of
the oldest mythological ideas of the Indo-germans. We find an
echo of it in the Persian Shah-nahmeh, Avhere Feridun is said to
have overcome Zohak [=Zend Aji ddhaka, destroying serpent,
Ahi], on whose shoulders grew serpents, and to have confined
him in the volcanic mountain Demavend. Here also the ad-
versary has become a mere demon, his animal form being only
hinted at. But the Greek hymn on Apollo still relates how the
shining archer-god killed the terrible serpent Python ; and the
Hy'miskvidha of the Edda represents the thunderer Thorr
struggling with the great sea-snake that surrounds the habit-
able earth like a girdle. One may almost assert that the latter
two poems have remained more true to the spirit of the Vedic
poem quoted above, though the names are altered and the scene
shifted, than the epic poetry of the Hindus. There is more
manly vigour, and less fantastic glamour in these two European
songs. The Norwegian Thorr, rowing on the icebound northern
ocean "at the end of the heavens," and by means of his angling
hook, baited with the head of an ox, drawing up the snake from
the abyss of the sea, and lustily beating its skull with his ham-
mer-— this northern god is the brother of the Vedic Indra far
more truly than the epic namesake of the latter.

The killing of the demon-serpent belongs to the divine
mythology of the Indo-germanic races. But we know full well
that there must also have been heroic tales anterior to their
separation into individual nations. One of the oldest of these
is the tradition of Manu or Manus, i.e. "the man" (lit. "the
thinker"), the mythical ancestor of the human race. He was
known to the ancient Germani under the form Manna.^^ In the
Vedic hymns he is called Father Manu, and represented as the
ancestor of the Hindus, and even of the whole human race,27
as the kindler of the sacrificial fire, and as the ordainer of holy
rites. In the later Vedic times, represented to us by the ritual
compositions in prose v/hich are called Brahmanas, Manu has
become connected with the story of the deluge, which is not
mentioned in the hymns, and which is, perhaps, not indigenous
in India. The story is thus told in the S'ata-patha-brahmana r^^
" To Manu they brought in the morning water to wash. As
they bring it with their hands for the washing, a fish comes
into the hands of Manu as soon as he has washed himself He
spoke to Manu the word, ' Keep me ; I shall preserve thee.'

*^ Tacitus, Germ. c. i. Tacitus of course latinises the name to Mannus.
^ See an article on Manu by Dr. J. Muir, in the Journal of the Boyal
Asiatic Society, xx. pp. 406 sqq. ^^ i. 8, 1. 1.

526 Indian Epic Poetry,

Manu said, ' From what wilt thou preserve me ?' The fish said,

* The flood will carry away all these creatures. I shall preserve
thee from it/ * How canst thou be kept V said Manu. The
fish replied, ' As long as we are small, there is much destruction
for us ; fish swallows fish. First, then, thou must keep me in
a jar. If I outgrow it, dig a hole, and keep me in it. If I
outgrow this, take me to the sea, and I shall be saved from
destruction.' He soon became a large fish. He said to Mimu,

* When I am full-grown, in the same year the flood will come.
Build a ship then, and worship me ; and when the flood rises,
go into the ship, and I shall preserve thee from it.' Manu
brought the fish to the sea, after he had preserved him thus.
And in the year which the fish had pointed out, Manu had
built a ship, and worshipped the fish. Then when the flood
had risen, he went into the ship. The fish came swimming to
him, and Manu fastened the rope of the ship to a horn of the
fish. The fish carried him by it over the northern mountain.
The fish said, ^ I have preserved thee. Bind the ship to a tree.
May the water not cut thee asunder while thou art on the
mountain. As the water will sink, thou wilt slide down.'
Manu slid down with the water; and this is called the slope of
Manu on the northern mountain. The flood had carried away
all these creatures, and thus Manu was left there alone. He
went along meditating a hymn, and wishing for ofi'spring. And
he sacrificed there also. Taking clarified butter, coagulated
milk, whey and curds, he made an ofi'ering to the waters. In a
year a woman was brought forth from it. . . .She went ofi", and
came to Manu. Manu said to her, ' Who art thou V She said,
' I am thy daughter.' . . . Manu went along with her, meditating
a hymn, and wishing for ofi'spring ; and by her he begat this
offspring which is called the offspring of Manu."-^

This is sufl[iciently strange, and one sees indeed, at a glance,
that so fantastical a story is later than the time oif the hymns.
Nevertheless it is sober prose if compared with the account in the
Mahabharata."'^ The episode of the fish (Matsyopkhjanam, as it
is called) begins by stating how Manu practised severe austeri-
ties for ten thousand years, uplifting his arms, standing on one
foot, his head hanging downward, and his eyes always open.
He then goes to the banks of the river Virini, and a small fish
there implores him to save it from large rapacious ones. Manu,
in compliance with this request, puts it into an urn. But it
soon begins to grow. Manu, on its request, puts it into a great
lake; then, as it still increases in bulk, into the Ganga; and as
even this becomes too narrow for it, Manu ultimately carries it

=5 See Professor Max Miiller's History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 425.
» iii. 12748.

Indian Ejrlc Poetry, 527

oiF to the sea. The text assures us that during all this time
•■' the fish, though very great, could be lifted according to will
by ^[anu, who, as he carried it, was enjoying the pleasures of
its touch and smell." The fish then tells him that a general
deluge is at hand^ and advises him to build a ship, to put all
the seeds of living beings in it, and go upon it himself with the
seven (mythical) sages. Manu follows this advice ; and when
swimming in his ship on the flood, he begins to think of the
fish, which consequently appears with a horn upon its head,
round which Manu fastens a rope. " And bound by this rope
the fish dragged onward the ship in the water with mighty
strength, carrying them over the ocean, as it were, with its
waves dancing and its waters roaring. The ship, tossed about
by the mighty winds on the main, shook like a drunken woman ;
ndther earth nor the regions were visible ; all was water, air,
and sky.'' After " many hosts of years" the fish brings them
to the highest peak of the Himalaya, to which the ship is
fastened, and which therefore is called !N^au-bandhana [i. e.
binding of the ship). The fish then reveals his true nature.
" ' I am the lord of the creatures, than whom there is no higher
one. In the form of a fish you are delivered by me from this
danger. And Manu miist C7'eate all beings together, gods,
demons, and men, and all the luorlds, the moveable and the im-
moveahle. And through severe 'penance shall he have confidence;
by my favour he shall not be confused in the creating of beings.'
Having thus spoken, the fish disappeared in a moment." This
supremely wonderful transaction is fitly concluded by Manu,
after he has gained the necessary power through his self-casti-
gation, creating (not, as Europeans would expect, and as the
older tale has it, engendering) all creatures.

The two preceding examples of Vedic stories turned into epic
ones belong to mythology; but also historical personages, men-
tioned in the Vedic hymns, have been transformed into heroes of
epic legend. One of the most remarkable instances of this kind
is furnished by Vis'vamitra and Vasishta. Professor Eoth has
proved,^^ from the hymns that have reference to them, that
Vis'vamitra was at one time the purohita or family priest of
king Sudas, a mighty ruler near the Yamuna ; that in all pro-
bability Vis'vamitra was driven from this position by Vasishta
and Vasishta's family; and that afterwards Sudas, aided by the
prayer of the Vasishtas, gained a great victory over ten united
tribes in the Penjab, amongst which were the Bharata, the tribe
of Vis'vamitra. There is nothing extraordinary in a king's ex-
changing one chaplain for another ; and only the great power
and renown of the two priests and their respective families can

3' In his essay Zur Litteratur und Gcschichte der Vedas, p. 87.

52S Indian Epic Poetry.

have pven this quarrel any particular significance. It seems
that Vis'vamitra, having fallen into disfavour with the king,
caused his tribe to take part in the war against Sudas. When,
however, the Bharatas came to the river Hyphasis (Vipas'), they
had some difficulty in crossing it. On this occasion Vis'vami-
tra composed the following hymn, one of the most beautiful
specimens of Yedic poetry :^- " From out the slopes of the
mountains, full of longing, like two mares set free, vying with
each other in the race, like two shining cows to the fondling
of their young ones, thus run Vipas' and S'utrudri with their
waters. Sent by Indra, fulfilling his order (?), ye go towards
the ocean, like warriors on their chariot, uniting your waves
together, swelling, one meeting the other, ye clear streams. I
have come to my maternal river, to the broad, blissful Vipas' ;
we have come to both the streams that go to their common ^oal
like cows licking their calves. ' With our swelling waters we
go to the place appointed by the gods. Our purpose of flowing
is never changed. What does the sage desire who so fervently
invokes the rivers?' 'Rejoice at my friendly voice, ye streams,
[pause] for a moment in your courses. To the river I pray,
Kaus'ika's son, seeking help, with great fervour.^ ' Indra has
dug our beds, armed with the thunderbolt ; he killed Vritra,
who had gathered up the streams. Savitri, the god with beau-
tiful hands, led us forward ; by his command we go in broad
channels. For ever praiseworthy is this heroic deed of Indra,
that he slew Ahi. Those that surrounded the floods he slew
them with the thunderbolt ; then flowed the waters, desirous
of flowing. Do not, 0 poet, forget this word, whatsoever later
times may tell thee ; be friendly, 0 bard, to us in thy songs ;
do not slander us. Amongst men be praise to thee.' ' Listen,
ye two sisters, to the poet ; he has come from afar with his
chariot. Lower yourselves well ; become easy to cross ; re-
main beneath the axletree with your floods.' ' We will listen,
0 poet, to thy words. From afar hast thou come with thy
chariot. I shall bend down for thee, as a suckling woman [to
the child] ; I shall embrace thee as a maiden the man.' ' When
the Bharatas shall have crossed, the host ready for battle,
hastening, moved by Indra, then your ordered course may
flow onward. I choose your favour [or praise?], who are worthy
of sacrifices. The warlike Bharatas crossed over ; the sage en-
joyed the favour of the streams. May ye swell, giving food
and riches ; fill your beds ; go quickly."

We have given this hymn nearly in its entirety, not because
it throws any additional light on the subject of the enmity
between Vis'vdmitra and Vasishta, but because its beautiful

3= Rigveda, iii. 3, 4.

Indian Epic Poetry, 529

simplicity oiFers a strong contrast to tlie fantastic legends of
the epos. The quarrel of the two sages forms the subject of a
renowned episode in the Ramayana.^^ King VisVamitra, who
is here represented as belonging to the warrior caste, having
reigned ten thousand years, came once upon a time to the her-
mitage of the lioly Brahman Vasishta. This latter possessed
a wonderful cow, Kamaduh {i. e. milking the wishes), or S'abala
(variegated) ; and to honour his royal guest, he ordered her to
bring forth superabundance of good cheer. Accordingly the cow
produces " sugar-canes, honeycombs, fried grains, and the good
liquor of the lythrum, excellent drinks, and manifold viands,
mountain-like heaps of things to be sucked and to be eaten,
choice food, cakes, and streams of milk, vessels full of mani-
fold sweet and well-tasting liquors here and there, and spirits
of molasses of a thousand kinds. The whole army of Vis'va-
mitra was highly pleased, the men delighted and satiated,
having been entertained by Vasishta/' Yis'vamitra evinces a
natural wish to possess so wonderful a treasure ; but the sage
refuses to part with it, even though Yis'vamitra promises him
in return a koti (10,000,000) of cows. Hereupon the king
takes the cow by force. She, however, makes her way back to
her master, and advises him to make use of her miraculous
powers for his and her protection. On his command she by
degrees brings forth Pahlavas, S'akas, Yavanas, and other
powerful hosts, which destroy Yis'vamitra's army and his sons.
Yis vamitra thereupon practises a course of austerities, until
S'iva appears to him and grants him the weapons of gods and
demons. By these he destroys Yasishta's hermitage ; but fur-
ther mischief is prevented by Yasishta, who overcomes all his
enemy's missiles by only using his staif. Yis'vamitra there-
upon comes to the conclusion that the power of a Kshattriya
is nothing in comparison with that of a Brahman, and con-
sequently begins a new course of penance, through which he
ultimately succeeds in obtaining the quality of a Brahman,
Brahma himself with all the gods descending to announce to
him his new dignity. Of the many incidents in Yis'vamitra's
long self-castigation we shall only mention one, on account of
its passing strangeness. King Tris'anku having taken it into
his head that he would rise with his body alive to heaven, asks
Yasishta to help him in the offerings necessary for this pur-
pose. Yasishta refuses, and so do Yasishta's sons, who even
by their curse turn Tris'anku into a Paria. The king thus
baffled applies to Yis'vamitra, who receives him kindly, and
forthwith begins a sacrifice for him. But the gods do not
make their appearance at it. So Yis'vamitra, in his anger,
** i. 52, 13. AVe quote, in general, Gorresio's edition.

530 Indian Epic Poetry.

" swinging the sacrificial ladle, spoke to Tris'anku, ' Behold,
0 king of men, the power of my penance. I here will carry
thee to heaven quickly with thy own body. 0 Tris'anku,
go to the sky with thy own body, lord of men. By the power
of all the penance stored up by me since childhood, by the
power of that penance, go thou to the sky with thy body/
When this word had been spoken by the hermit, that king
with his body rose up into the air and to the heaven before
the eyes of the hermits. When the slayer of Paka (Indra) saw
Tris'anku entering heaven, he spoke with all the hosts of the
gods this word : ' Tris'anku, fall on the ground ; there is no
place for thee in heaven, thou hast been struck by the curse
of thy preceptor [meaning Vasishta] ; fall Avith thy head
downwards/ Thus addressed by the great Indra, Tris'anku
fell from the sky, and he cried, with his head downward to-
wards Yis'vamitra, ' Help me.' Having heard this word of him,
falling from the sky, Vis'vamitra, in high anger, spoke, ' Stay,
stay/ Then, by the power of his Brahma-penance, like unto
a second creator, he created in the south another group of
seven sages [this is the Sanskrit name for the Great Bear],
and another row of lunar constellations [twenty -eight in
number, — a kind of lunar zodiac], he began to create in the
southern region of the heavens by the confidence in the power
of his Brahma-penance. And having created the host of lunar
constellations, with his eyes flaming with anger, he began to
create new gods with a (new) Indra as their chief." Naturally
enough, the gods — only the lower ones, or devas, are here
meant — are frightened at this prospect. They come to terms
therefore with Vis'vfimitra ; he is to give up his design, but
what he has achieved is to remain unaltered. " These stars
shall stand outside the way of the sun ;^* and this Tris'anku
shall stand with his head downward contented in the southern
sky, shining in his own splendour." There is clearly some
astronomical fact alluded to in this story, which goes a little
to mitigate its extravagance ; but what a vast diiference be-
tween the Vis'vamitra of the legends and the poet of the
Rigveda !

We have adduced sufficient examples to enable our readers
to see, on the one hand, the connection between the oldest
Indian literature and the epics, and, on the other hand, the
vast distance which separates them. To sum up, the ultimate
origin of the epics is to be sought in oral traditions, some of
them dating from times when*the Indo-germanic nations had not
yet separated, others from the time of the hymns ; to these were

^ The word ai/ogdni, which follows, is obscure. Gorresio translates, " CBsenti
da congiunzione coUa luna." Schlegel's recension has anekani, •• several."

Indian Epic Poetry. 531

added, no doubt, many memories of the centuries that must
have elapsed from the composition of the hymns to Alexander
and As'oka, — centuries of which, for us, the later Vedic writings
are the representatives. Lastly, even the exploits of the Greeks
and other western nations have added a little, though very
little indeed, to the epic stores. But the first trace of epic
tales existing as an acknowledged form of literature, we find in
the 15th book of the Atharvaveda, which, however, bears more
the character of a Brahmana.*^^ There we hear of certain com-
positions, called Itihasa (story, etymologically iti ha ctsa "thus
it was"), Purana (old legends), Gatha (song), Naras'ansi (praise
of men). The same names are frequently mentioned in the
Brail m an as'^^ and Aranyakas. Epic tales are evidently in-
tended by the two first words in these passages, as the Ma-
habharata^^ applies both expressions to itself. Yet the ancient
Itihasas were no doubt tales in prose, like the story of Manu,
quoted before. On the nature of the two other kinds of com-
position light is thrown by an interesting passage in the S'ata-
patha-brahmana.^^ At the preparation of the great horse sacri-
fice, '• lute-players are assembled. Then the Adhvary v [priest]
addresses them : * Lute-players, praise ye him who sacrifices,
together with the old pious kings.^ They do thus. — A lute-
player belonging to the warrior-caste [rajanya], turning to the
south, sings three strophes [gdtha] made by himself, the con-
tents of which are, ' he fought,' ' he won that battle.' " This
passage shows that amongst the warrior-caste there arose, at
an early period, the habit of composing short songs in praise
of pious and gallant princes, both of olden times and of their
own. These gathas were metrical, whilst the itihasas were in
prose. From the fusion of these two kinds of literature, we
apprehend, arose epic ballads properly so called, in verse, like
the short gathas, but more extensive, like the itihasas. The
subject-matter Avas taken, as shown before, partly from old
religious traditions, partly from the exploits of later heroes
and kings. The origin of the more warlike songs is undoubt-
edly to be sought amongst the Kshattriya caste, as the passage
from the S'ata-patha-brahmana testifies ; and that this caste
continued for a long time to determine to a great extent the
development of epic literature, is evident from the heroic en-
thusiasm that is clearly perceivable in the battle-scenes of the
Mahabharata. But, of course, the Brahmans must soon have
taken part also in this new kind of literature, which they

3' Atharv. xv. 6,

3« For instance, S'ata-patha-br^hmana, xi. 5, 6, 9 : compare Miiller, Ancient
Sanskrit Literature, p. 40.

3^ i. 17, 19. 38 xiii. 4, 3, 3. 5.

VOL. IV. n n

532 Indian Epic Poetry.

ultimately succeeded in colouring so deeply with their own
particular views. The name for a bard who recites epic tales
is sitta, which at the same time means charioteer. The suta is
described as the son of a woman of the priestly caste and of
a Kshattriya father. Here we see clearly the intimate con-
nection of the epic poetry with war ; and, on the other hand,
the double influence that has been at work in the creation of
the old ballads. The Mahabharata is said to be composed by
the sage Vyasa, son of a Kshattriya woman ; it is first recited
by the Brahman Vais'ampayana, before the king Janamejaya,
when he is engaged in a great sacrifice of serpents. It is
recited a second time before an assembly of Brahma-sages at
a sacrifice in the forest Nemisha. The bard on this occasion
is Ugras'ravas, who is styled Sauta, that is, descendant of Suta,
a name for minstrel, as we said before. In the third book of
the Mahabharata, Markandeya and other Brahmans visit the
banished Pandu kings in their forest retreat, and tell them the
tales of old. The Ramayana also was first made by the rishi
Valmiki ; he then teaches it to two of his disciples, Kus'a and
Lava, the sons of Rama, and therefore Kshattriyas, whose
united name (Kus'i-lava) signifies bard ; and these go and sing
it in the royal capitals before the kings, and also before Rama
himself at his horse-sacrifice. From all these testimonies,
mythical though they are, we conclude that epic poetry con-
tinued to be chiefly cultivated amongst the warrior caste; that
it celebrated, by preference, the heroes of that caste ; that
many, probably most, of the poets and minstrels belonged to
the Kshattriyas, or were allied by birth to them ; and that
the songs were recited (not read) in their assemblies. We lay
great stress on the last point. All testimonies, from the Brah-
manas downwards, are unanimous in representing the epic
songs as handed down by oral tradition. Hence, we may natu-
rally infer that they were originally short. When and by
whom greater poems were first indited, we have now no means
of ascertaining. But the flourishing time of the epos must
have been a period when Sanskrit was still spoken. For be-
sides the analogy with other nations, which forces us to deny
the possibility of any original epic poetry ever arising in a
dead language, the forms of the Mahabharata and Ramdyana
are very simple, if compared with the later medieval artificial
Sanskrit, and show all the vigour, power, and flexibility which
characterise a living speech.

In the history of the epic, special importance must be
attached to the country Magadha (South Behar), for Mdgadha,
literally a man from that region^ has come to mean minstrel.
Magadha was, in Alexander's time, and for a century after-

k

Indian Epic Poetry. .533

"wards, tlie most powerful kingdom of India ; and if the Bud-
dhistic traditions are trustworthy, it had been so for more
than two hundred years before. The kings of this realm were
very favourable to Buddhism ; and within its precincts the
great missionary movement arose in the third century B.C. It
seems that we must add to this merit the one of having pro-
duced numerous epic poets. We shall not be very far wrong in
assuming that epic poetry reached its highest development there
in the fifth and fourth century, or perhaps earlier, certainly
not later, because Sanskrit was already extinct in the third
century, and that there were composed the spirited ballads on
the battle of the Kurus and Pandus, which lie at the bottom
of the Mahabharata. Perhaps at that time larger works may
already have been attempted. But the arrangement of the
whole mass of floating song in the shape of one bulky written
poem, and the thorough recasting of the whole in accordance
with the Brahmanical spirit, must be later still. Nor has even
this been done at once. For the Mahabharata itself states
that it has three different beginnings,"^^ in which Lassen
rightly recognises three different recensions, probably following
one another. The Indians have personified this last stage of
development in the person of Vyasa, the mythical author of
the Mahabharata. Vyasa is properly only a surname of Krishna
Dvaipayana, and means "collector, redactor.'' We have already
shown that additions continued to be made to the Mahabha-
rata in the spirit of the ancient songs during the time of the
Greek Penjab kings, and down to the fifth century a.d., but
probably even later. For Weber states that an episode of the
Mahabharata, on which S'ankara wrote a commentary in the se-
venth century, had increased by six or seven stanzas up to the
time of Nilakantha, that is, in six or seven centuries. As so many
strata have covered, and no doubt partly destroyed, the original
layer, it would be folly to attempt to cut out of the Maha-
bharata the original small ballads, after Lachmann's fashion ;
and even- Lassen's attempt to go back at least to the first of
the three versions is not likely to be successful.

The Ramayana is a more compact poem. There are fewer epis-
odes ; and as the two recensions which we have, — one from the
north-west of India, the other from Bengal, — agree upon the
whole, it is not unlikely that we have in it, with few altera-
tions, the work of one man, who undertook to treat the story
of Rama in the spirit of the ancient epic, which he must have
known by study, as Panyasis or Callimachus studied and imi-
tated Homer. The only difiiculty in this hypothesis is the
power and originality displayed in the Ramayana, which seems

33 i. 51, 52,

534 Indian Epic Poetry.

too great for a mere learned poet. But perhaps these may be
due to antecedent popular songs, which were only recast ; in
which case, indeed, the so-called author would be also a kind
of reviser.

Having now, as far as our scanty materials allow, ascer-
tained the growth of the Indian epic, we proceed to give our
readers a sketch of the leading stories in both the great
poems.'*^

The Mahabharata, or Great Bharata, is most probably called
so as recording the exploits of the race of Bharata, a mythical
king, descended from Soma (the Moon). The ninth from him
was Kuru, after whom the heroes of the Mahabharata, being his
descendants, are called Kauravas or Kurus. Later in the line
we find Vichitra-virya, who, however, dies childless, and leaves
two widows, Ambika and Ambalika. By the sage Yyjisa, the
mythical author of the Mahabharata, each of these has a son,
Dhrita-rashtra {i. e. holder of the kingdom), who was born blind,
and Pandu, so called on account of his pale complexion. They
were brought up by their uncle Bhishma, in Hastinapura (near
Delhi) ; and eventually Pandu became king, his elder brother
being excluded on account of his blindness. Both took wives,
Dhrita-rashtra choosing Gandhari, and Pandu being chosen at
a svayam-vara"^^ by Pritha or Kunti. Pritha, before her mar-
riage, had a son by the sun-god, who was born with a mail-coat.
His mother being afraid of her relatives, although the sun-god
had miraculously restored her maidenhood, exposed the child
in the river, and he was found by a charioteer, Adiratha, who
reared him as his own son. When Vasushena, as he was called
by his foster parents, had grown up, the god Indra one day ap-
peared to him in the shape of a Brahman, and asked him for
his armour, which the pious hero gave away. Indra in return
gave him strength over gods, men, and demons, and changed
his name to Kama. Kama's story has some points in common
with the Teutonic hero Sigfrid, who also, at least according to
Viltina saga, was abandoned by his mother in the river, and
like him was invulnerable, and after a life of heroism died an
untimely death. Pandu afterwards took a second wife, Madri.
Dhrita-rashtra had a hundred sons by Gandhari, of whom Dur-
yodhana {i.e. bad in fight) was the eldest. Pandu, who had
retired into the woods, leaving the throne to his blind brother,
one day shot a pair of deer, male and female, which turned out

<" Cf. the analysis of them -which is given by Professor Monier Williams
in his book on Indian Epic Poetry, p. 91.

^' A form of marriage in use amongst the Kshattriyas, according to which
the reigning king convenes a large assembly of kings, and his daughter then
chooses from amongst them at her own will.

Indian Epic Poetry. 5S5

to be a certain sage and liis wife, who had only taken the form
of these animals. The sage cursed him, and predicted that he
would die in the embraces of one of his wives. He conse-
quently became a hermit, and kept apart from his two Avives.
They, however, had sons by different gods. Pritha bore Yu-
dishthira, whose father was Dharma. Dharma means law, and
is another name of Yama, the Hindu Pluto. Accordingly the
child became a highly virtuous prince, firm in battle, as his
name implies, and at the same time not less pious, altogether
realising the Hindu ideal of a chivalrous and dutiful king.
Bhima, the second son of Pritha, Avas the child of the god Vayu
(wind). He was of prodigious strength — when he fell acciden-
tally as a child, he split a rock to pieces — and of savage bravery,
doing justice to his name, which means terrible. Pritha's third
son, by Indra, was Arjuna {i.e. white, shining). He is the chief
hero of the Mahabharata, and is always under the special pro-
tection of his divine father, whose wars against the demons he
occasionally carries on instead of his parent. Madri had twins
by the two As'vins (Dioscuri). They were called Nakula and
Sahadeva, and were both great heroes. These five Pandus (Pan-
davas), or sons of Pandu, as they are called oddly enough, are
represented as thoroughly noble, whereas Dhrita-nishtra's sons,
commonly called Kurus or Kauravas, although that name is
applied also to Pandu's offspring, are described as mean and
low-minded. Pcindu died while the five heroes were still chil-
dren, having forgotten the curse laid upon him and embraced
Pritha. With him Madri burned herself, as a faithful Hindu
wife ought, and Pritha, who had disputed her this honour,
returned with the five princes to Hastinapura. They were
educated together Avith Dhrita-rashtra's children, and instructed
in archery and Avarlike exercises by the Brahman Drona. When
their education Avas completed, a great tournament Avas held,
in order to try their skill, and Arjuna came off victorious, Avhen
suddenly Kama entered " like a Avalking mountain." He
challenged Arjuna to single combat, but, as the combatants
Avere obliged to tell their names and pedigrees, Kama's face
became "like a drooping lotus,^' and the fight did not take
place. But Duryodhana, by making Kama king of Anga on the
spot, engaged his good services for ever on his side against the
Pandus. After various deeds of heroism by the five brothers,
Yudishthira Avas installed by Dhrita-rashtra as heir-apparent ;
and in consequence of the increased renoAvn of the Pandavas
it came to pass that .the citizens of Hastinapura assembled and
proposed to croAvn Yudishthira at once. Thereupon Duryo-
dhana laid a plot against the life of his adversaries. He caused
his father to send them aAvay on an excursion from the capital.

536 Indian Epic Poetry,

Meanwhile he sent a friend of his before them, to prepare a
house for their reception, which he was to fill with hemp, resin,
and other combustible materials, plastering the walls with
mortar composed of oil, fat, and lac. This was to be set on fire,
when the Pandavas would be asleep in it. In consequence of
a Avarning, however, they escaped by an underground passage,
having substituted for themselves a Pariah woman with her
five sons ; and the house having been set on fire, they were ac-
cordingly supposed to have perished in the flames. For a time
they lived with a Brahman, putting on the disguise of men-
dicant Brahmans.

Not long after, Draupadf or Krishna, the daughter of Dru-
pada, king of the Panchalas, was about to hold her svayam-
vara. She had been in a former life the daughter of a sage,
and had performed severe penance in order to obtain a hus-
band. The god S'iva, in consequence, appeared to her and
promised her five husbands in an after-existence. She was
thereupon born in Drupada's family, and destined to be the
wife of the five Pandavas. The princes accordingly set out
for Drupada's court. The king, who secretly wished to have
Arjuna for his son-in-law, had devised a trial of strength for
the wooers of his daughter, similar to the test adopted by
Penelope. It consisted in hanging up on a moveable machine
a mark, which was to be hit by a bow very difficult to bend.
A kind of stage or arena was prepared for the competitors ;
and, after due offerings by the royal purohita (chaplain),
Draupadi was led forward by her brother Drishta-dyumna,
who announced the object of the meeting " with a voice like a
thunder-cloud.^' The effect of the sight of Draupadi seems to
have been very marvellous."*^ '* Those youthful kings, adorned
with earrings, vying with each other, sprang up, all of them,
weapons in hand, contemplating in their mind arms and
strength, having their pride kindled by their beauty, heroism,
nobility, virtue, wealth, and youth, like princes of elephants
from the Himalaya maddened by the power of passion. Look-
ing towards each other with eager envy, having their limbs
penetrated by desire, crying towards each other, ' Krishna is
my oAvn !' they rose up suddenly from their seats. Those
Kshattriyas going to the stage, having assembled through the
wish of winning Draupadi, shone like the hosts of the gods
surrounding Uma, the daughter of the king of mountains''
[S'iva's wife]. " Having their bodies afflicted by the arrows of
Cupid, with their hearts drawn towards Krishnd, those lords
of men, descending into the arena, proclaimed enmity, even
(friends) towards friends, for the sake of Drupada's daughter.

■^ Mah. i. 7005.

Indian Epic Poetry. 537

Then came on their chariots the hosts of the gods, — Rudra
their chief {i.e. S'iva), Indra, and the Dioscuri, and all the
genii, and the winds, led by Yama and the Lord of riches,
the Titans, the griffins,^^ the mighty serpents, and the elves
and fairies." Many of the kings tried the bow, but were
unsuccessful, being drawn down on their knees by its weight.
At last Arjuna, still disguised as a Brahman, came forward,
and stood^^ " beside the bow like a mountain not to be
shaken." Having mentally invoked his divine father, Arjuna
seized the bow, and " in the twinkling of an eye he had bent
it, taken five arrows, and hit the mark, which, being well
pierced, fell suddenly on the ground. Then there was a sound
in the sky and a great noise in the assembly, and the god
rained divine flowers on the head of Arjuna, the killer of
enemies.'' Draupadi and her father joyfully accepted Arjuna,
and were ultimately persuaded to have her married to all the
five brothers, when Yyasa had acquainted them with Drau-
padi's divine destination. The Pandavas having now revealed
themselves, and become strengthened by their union with the
king of Panchala, were received favourably by Dhrita-rashtra,
who gave Hastinapura to his own sons, but allowed the five
brothers to occupy a district near the Yamuna, where they
built Indraprastha (near Delhi). Some time after, Arjuna, in
liis wanderings, met with Krishna, a prince of the Yadu race,
who always remained the truest friend and counsellor of the
brothers. This was no small gain to them, as Krishna was an
incarnation of Vishnu himself ^^ Arjuna marries also Krish-
na's sister Subhadra, by whom he has a son, Abhimanyu,
father of Parikshit, and grandfather of the Janamejaya, at
whose great sacrifice the Mahabharata professes to have been
first recited. After various exploits, Yudishthira wished to cele-
brate his inauguration as king. But Krishna informed him that
he could only do so when Jarasandha, king of Magadha, should be
destroyed. This was a powerful monster, who held '*all kings'''
in prison in his capital,^^ as "a lion, the king of the mountain,,
keeps mighty elephants in his lair.'' However, he was ultimately
conquered by Bhima. But the fight was terrible^^ " Jara-
sandha, the conqueror of foes, advanced towards Bhima, mighty
in splendour as the Titan Bala towards Indra. Then being

^ This is a free translation oi garuda, which signifies certain mythical birds.

44 i. 7049.

45 Professor Lassen thinks, however, that all passages in the Mahabharata
implying Krishna's divinity, as well as the divinity of the hero of the Ramay^na,
are in both poems later additions and do not belong to the original plan. That
may be ; but, as we have already seen, we cannot hope to recover the original
form of the Mah-^bharata.

46 Mah^b. ii. 627. 47 897.

538 Indian Epic Poetry,

4

protected by Krishna, having pronounced spells over him. the
strong Bhimasena went onward to Jarasandha, longing for the
fight ; and the two tigers of men with many weapons met
each other, the strong heroes, in highest joy, desirous of con-
quering each other. Pressing their hands together, yelling
like elephants, thundering like clouds, both wielding many
weapons, struck by each other's palms, face to face, like two
enraged lions, they fought, dragging each other about. ... To
see their fight, the citizens assembled — Brahmans, merchants,
and warriors, in thousands, S'udras, women, and aged men
altogether; the place was densely covered by crowds of men.
As they met each other, striking with their arms, disen-
tangling and again entangling them, their shock against each
other was very fearful, as of two mountainlike thunderbolts.
Both were fully rejoicing in their strength, the best of strong
heroes, wishing each other's destruction, desirous of conquer-
ing one another. This fearful combat disturbed and confused
men, in the battle of these two strong ones, as of Vritra and
Yasava. They dragged each other to and fro, backward and
aside, and they hit each other with their knees. Then chid-
ing one another with loud noise, they struck blows like the
falling of rocks ; both broad-chested, having long arms, both
skilled in pugilism, they fell upon each other with their arms,
as with iron clubs. It was begun on the first day of the
month Kartika, and lasted night and day, without their eat-
ing food, without stopping. But on the fourteenth night the
king of Maghada stopped through weariness." After a pause
the fight was renewed, and Bhima broke the back of his ad-
versary ; and "as he was trampled down, and the son of
Pandu was roaring, the sound became tumultuous, causing
fear to all living beings. All inhabitants of Magadha trembled
through the noise of Bhimasena and Jarasandha. ' Is the
Himalaya split ? is the earth torn asunder V Thus the people
of Magadha thought because of the noise. Then leaving at
the door of the royal race this king as in a sleep, but with life
departed, the conquerors of foemen went away. Krishna, hav-
ing ordered the standard-bearer to get ready Jarasandha's
chariot, and caused the two brothers to ascend it, liberated
the prisoners." They then went home to Indraprastha, and
held the inauguration festival.

When the inauguration was over, Krishna returned to his
own city. Soon after Duryodhana expressed to S'akuni his reso-
lution to get rid of the Pandavas ; and S'akuni, who was skilful
at playing with dice, prevailed upon Yudishthira to play with
him. In this match Yudishthira lost all his territory, his
riches, and at last even Draupadi. Nevertheless, the five Pan-

Indian Epic Poetry, 539

(lavas were to give up their kingdom only for twelve years,
and were allowed to retire to the wood accompanied by their
wife. In their-forest life they were visited by pious Brahmans
and other friends, who consoled them with many stories. One
of them is the well-known story of King Nala, who, like Yudi-
shthira, lost his kingdom by gambling, and then in despair left
his wife, but ultimately recovered both. Arjuna meanwhile en-
gaged in a course of severe penance, to obtain his father's divine
weapons, in order to secure victory over the Kurus. During
the course of these austerities he had to fight Siva, who ap-
peared to him in the shape of a wild mountaineer, Kirata, but
ultimately revealed his true nature, and presented him with
his own particular weapon Pas'upata (so called from Pasu-pati,
i.e. lord of creatures, a surname of S'iva). After this Indra
and the other guardian gods of the celestial regions presented
Arjuna with other missiles ; and at last he was taken to the
divine palace of Indra, who embraced him, and placed him be-
side himself on his throne. At the end of the twelfth year the
five brothers came forward from their retreat, and after some
preparations, the Kurus and Pandus met each other in a great
battle on the plain of Kuru-kshetra, north-Avest of Delhi, each of
them assisted by their respective friends ; Drupada and Krishna,
together with Balarama, Krishna's brother, being on the side of
the Pandus, Avhilst Kama was the chief hero of the opposite
party. The opening of the fight was accompanied by fearful
prodigies — showers of blood fell, thunder was heard in a cloud-
less sky, the moon looked like fire, asses were born from cows,
&c. In the battle the heroes perform prodigies of valour.
" Arjuna is described as killing five hundred warriors simul-
taneously, covering the whole plain and filling the rivers with
blood ; Yudishthira, as slaughtering a hundred men in a mere
twinkle; Bhim^, as annihilating a monstrous elephant including
all mounted upon it, and fourteen foot soldiers besides, with
one blow of his club ; Nakula and Sahadeva, fighting from
their chariots, as cutting off* heads by the thousand, and sowing
them like seed on the ground."''^ The result of this prowess of
the Pandus is the death of nearly all the leaders on the other
side, Duryodhana and Kama included. The latter, after innu-
merable deeds of valour, was slain by Arjuna. Their meeting
is thus described -^^ " They went against each other amidst
the sound of shells and drums, with white horses, the two ex-
cellent men. As two elephants of the Himalaya inflamed with
desire of a female, thus did they meet each other, the heroes of
fearful valour, Arjuna and Kama. As cloud comes on cloud,
as spontaneously a mountain on a mountain, thus did they

•*** Professor Monier Williams, 1. c. p. 27. ^' viii. 4513.

540 Ind^ian Epic Poetry.

meet each other amidst the noise of bows, strings, hands, and
wheels, pouring forth a rain of arrows. As two peaks with
high summits, full of trees, creeping plants and herbs, full of
mighty and various cascades and dwellings, thus the two strong
heroes unshaken struck one another with their mighty weapons.
Their falling upon each other was powerful, as formerly that of
the lord of the gods and Vairochana ; whilst their horses, their
charioteers, and their own bodies, were hit by arrows, and
others could not bear it, as the blood and water flowed. As
two great lakes, inhabited by flocks of birds, with tortoises,
fish, and expanded lotuses, but much disturbed and shaken by
the wind, thus did the two chariots with their banners meet.
Both were like in prowess to the great Indra, both were heroes
to be compared to the great Indra; and with arrows like the
thunderbolts of the great Indra they struck each other like Indra
and Vritra. The two shining armies, composed of elephants,
foot- soldiers, horses and chariots, wearing manifold armour,
ornaments, clothes, and weapons, trembled at the wonderful
fight of Arjuna and Kama, whose steeds w^ere bounding in
the air. The joyous warriors lifted up their arms together
with robes and hands shouting with lions' voice, desirous of
seeing how Arjuna went against Kama, wishing to slay, like
a mad elephant against an elephant. Then shouted the So-
makas to Pritha's son : ' Advance, 0 Arjuna ; smite Kama,
cut ofi" his head ; enough of hesitation.' Then also many of our
warriors spoke to Kama, * Go on, go on, 0 Kama; kill Arjuna
with sharp arrows. Again may the Pandus go for a long time
to the wood.' " When at last Kama fell,^^ " his body, every
where pierced by arrows, overflowed by streams of blood, shone
like the sun with its own rays. Having burned the hostile
army by the shining rays of his arrows, the sun of Kama had
set before the strong Pluto, Arjuna." *

After the battle, Dhrita-nishtra acknowledged the right of
his nephews ; and Yudishthira was consequently inaugurated
king, while Bhima was associated with him as heir-apparent.
The rest of the poem possesses little interest except for inci-
dental episodes ; but the story is nevertheless carried on to the
death of the heroes. Yudishthira and his brothers ultimately
gave up their kingdom to Arjuna's grandson Parikshit, and set
out on a journey towards Indra^s heaven on mount Meru, the
mythical Olympus, lying in the north. Draupadi went with
them, and also a dog. At last they reached Meru ; but one
after the other they dropped down dead, until Yudishthira was
left the sole survivor, still accompanied by the dog. Indra
refused him admittance to his heaven, as no dogs can enter

5" vs. 4910.

Indian Epic Poetry, 541

there. But the dog revealed himself as Yudishthira's father
Dharma, and they entered heaven together. There Yudish-
thu'a found Duryodhana, but not his own brothers. He declined
remaining in heaven without them, and was conducted by a
divine messenger to Naraka (Tartarus), where he heard the
cries of his brothers scorched by flames. He declared that he
would share their fate, and sent away his divine attendant.
But now Indra with the other gods appeared to inform him that
all had been illusion ; and after having bathed in the Granga,
he returned with them to the real heaven, where he met his
brothers, and Krishna in all the splendour of his divine nature.

From the above abstract our readers will have seen to w^hat
an extent the warlike character predominates in the poem, and
also that it is deeply tinged with a devotional spirit. Into the
episodes other elements enter largely, as we observed before.
Thus the episode of Nala is a thoroughly sentimental love-story;
but it is by this time so well known to English readers that w^e
shall say no more about it. Similar in spirit is the episode of
Savitri, a beautiful and virtuous princess, who by her faithful
love, and at the same time by her theological learning, so touches
Yama, the god of death, as to cause him to restore the life of
her husband, whose soul he was in the act of carrying away.

The picture of the Mahabharata would be imperfect without
alluding to the philosophical doctrines of some of the episodes,
especially the renowned Bhagavadgita. The reasoning in
this poem starts from the fundamental principle,^^ '^ there
can be no existence of the non-existing ; there is no non-
existence of that which exists.'' Consequently all things are
of the substance of God, who, being incarnate in Krishna,
describes himself in the following terms :^^ *' I am the origin
and the dissolution of the whole world. There is nothing
higher than I, 0 Arjuna. On me is all this universe fixed,
as strings of pearls on a thread. I am taste in the waters, I
am splendour in sun and moon, I am devotion in all scriptures,
I am sound in the air, male power in men, I am pure fra-
grance in the earth, I am the light of the giver of light, I am
the life in all living, I am penance in ascetics. Know me to
be the eternal seed of all creatures, the wisdom of the wise,
the radiance of the radiant am I." The ethical consequences
of this doctrine are as follows :^^ " He who sees me in all
things, and all things in me, for him I am not lost, nor is he
lost for me. He who worships me as existing in all beings,
turning towards unity, in whatever way he acts, he acts united
with me." " He who already in this life before the release from
the body can overcome the power arising from desire and pas-

^» ii. 16. *2 vii. 6. 53 ^i. 30,

542 Indian Epic Poetry,

sion, lie is united (to me), he is happy. He who has pleasure,
delight, and splendour in himself, he is united (with me), he,
becoming Brahma, reaches the extinction in Brahma [the Ab-
solute]. The extinction in Brahma is reached by sages whose
sins are annihilated, who are freed from duality, have overcome
themselves, and rejoice in the good of all beings. Those who
are free from desire and passion, striving, with subdued minds,
near unto them, versed in the knowledge of the soul, is the
extinction in Brahma." ^^ It is this quietistic morality that has
ultimately quenched the warlike spirit, still so clearly visible
in the Mahabharata.

The question remains, what historical truth there is in the
tradition of the great battle, or whether there is any. Lassen
is of opinion that the Mahabharata records in a mythical form
the shock sustained by the Aryan inhabitants of the inner
Hindostan in consequence of a new influx of immigrants of
the same race. He grounds this view chiefly on the name of
Pandu, which means " white, pale," and on that of his son
Arjuna, '^ white, shining,^' as the new stream of Aryans from
the north-w^est would be naturally of lighter colour than those
who had already dwelt in the country for a considerable time.
Krishna the name of their chief counsellor, and Krishna that
of their wife, meaning black, would imply, in Lassen's opinion,
that the new-comers were aided by a part of the black abori-
gines of Hindostan. In confirmation of such a theory one
could adduce the fact of Draupadi's, Madri^s, and Pritha^s
polyandry ; a custom entirely unknown to any Indo-germanic
nations, but still practised by some of the northern tribes of
India that are Tibetan by race. The fact, however, that the
father of both Pandus and Kurus was also called Krishna
seems altogether to overturn Lassen's theory. Besides, Prof.
Weber has pointed out another, and far more likely, explana-
tion of Arj Una's name. It appears as a surname of Indra, the
shining god of the firmament, in the Veda; and nothing is more
probable than that his son should be originally identical with
him, as he actually takes his father's place in the fights with
the demons. In this case, Arjuna, of course, never had any
existence. It is strange that scarcely any of the chief per-
sonages of the Mahabharata appear in any Vedic writing,
except Krishna, who is mentioned, however, only as a human
being, in the Yrihad-Aranyaka and Chandogya-upanisliad.
This is not favourable to the historical character of the Mah^-
bhdrata. In the White Yajurveda the Kurus and Panchalas
appear as two tribes closely united ; and in the same way they
are mentioned in the S'ata-patha-brahmana, which knows

*^ V. 23.

Indian Epic Foetry, 54'S

nothing of an internecine war between them.^^ On the other
hand, the Brahmana in question aUudes to the destruction of
Janamejaya, son of Parikshit, and of his brothers, Bhima-sena,
Ugrasena, S'ruta-sena, with their whole race, as a recent and
notorious event. This destruction of a kingly race, on which,
however, we have no farther details, Weber considers to be
the historical base of the tradition of the great battle with
which a part of the myths referring to the god Indra was com-
bined. If this be true, however, it is very strange that the
Pandus, that is Janamejaya's own family, should be victorious
in the great battle, and that moreover that battle should be
described in the epic as having happened three generations
before Janamejaya, and its history should be told to him. It
seems to us impossible, in the absence of all historical testi-
mony, to decide what were the actual facts on which the Maha-
bharata may or may not be founded ; but Weber s suggestion
with regard to Arjuna we unhesitatingly adopt as true.

On the Ramayana («. e. the exploits of Rama) we must be
more brief Its hero is Rama, son of Das'aratha, king of
Ayodhya (Oude), of the solar dynasty. Das'aratha had no son.
Accordingly he undertook a great horse-sacrifice to procure
offspring. The gods assembled to receive their share of the
sacrifice, and promised Das'aratha a son. They applied, then,
to Brahma, and represented to him that the world was in
danger of being destroyed by the king of demons, Ravana, who
could only be killed by a man, as he had obtained from Brahma,
by severe penance, the boon of being invulnerable to divine
beings. Vishnu accordingly promised to take the form of man.
At the sacrifice of Das'aratha a supernatural being rose from
the fire and offered a cup of nectar to the priest, which the
queens of Das'aratha were to drink. It was unequally shared
between them, and Kaus'alya, who got half of it, brought forth
Rama, who consequently was possessed of half the nature of
Vishnu. Sumitra having taken the fourth part bore Laksh-
mana and S'atrughna, each containing an eighth part of Vishnu's
essence ; lastly, Kaikeyi drank the remaining portion, and her
son Bharata was endowed with a fourth part* of the nature of
the god. All the brothers were great friends, and in the body
of the poem they are treated as human beings, even Rama
seldom appearing in his divine character, although he is a
pattern of human heroism and piety. He married Sita, the
daughter of king Janaka of Mithila (Tirhut), whom he won in
a similar way to that in which Arjuna won Draupadi, by not
only bending but even snapping a wonderful bow. Rama was
to be installed by his father as successor to the throne, when

53 "Weber, Indische Litteraturgeschichte, pp. 131, 132.

544« Indian Epic Poetry,

Bharata's mother, jealous at the preference shown to the son
of her rival, reminded the kin^r of a promise made in former
years, that he would grant her two boons she might ask of him.
She accordingly requested that Rdma should be banished, and
Bharata installed in his stead. The king was obliged to com-
ply ; but he soon afterwards died broken-hearted. Rama
meekly submitted to his fate, restrained Lakshmana's anger,
and declined Bharata's generous oifer to give the throne back
to him. He then proceeded with his wife and Lakshmana into
the forest of Dandaka, south of the Yamuna (Jumna).

Having learned that the holy hermits there were much mo-
lested by Bakshasas (demons, Titans), he promised his assist-
ance against them. One of them, S'urpa-nakha, the sister of
Bavana, fell in love with Rama ; but he refused her, whereupon
she caused two of her brothers to attack Rama and Lakshmana
with an army of Rakshasas. They were, however, defeated.
S'urpa-nakha consequently applied to Ravana himself, who was
the demon-king of Lanka (Ceylon), a monster with ten faces,
twenty arms, copper-coloured eyes, and white teeth like the
young moon. At the instigation of his sister, Ravana fell in
love with Sita, and determined to carry her off, with the help
of another demon, Marieha. This latter one took the shape of
a golden deer, for which Sita evinced so strong a desire, that
Rama went to hunt it. Marieha, mortally wounded by the
hero, uttered cries imitating Rama's voice, which so alarmed
Sita that she sent Lakshmana to seek for him. Thus left
alone, she was taken captive by Ravana, who carried her
through the air to his city, but tried in vain to shake her
faithfulness, against which neither the promise to make her
his queen, nor the torments inflicted on her by female demons
(Rakshasis), availed any thing. Rama and Lakshmana, in their
search for the lost maiden, reached the dwelling of Sugriva
(i. e. beautiful neck), king of the Monkeys, who had lost his
capital, Kishkindha [in the Dekhan], in warfare with his bro-
ther Bali. Rama reinstated the king of the Monkeys, who in
return promised to help him in the recovery of Sitd. Sugriva,
therefore, as soon as the rainy season was ended, sent divers
armies of his monkeys in search of her. One of them, com-
manded by Hanumat (large- jawed), succeeded in finding out
the hiding-place of Sita. Hanumat even leaped across through
the air to Ceylon, and had an interview with Sita, who refused
to be carried on his back to Rama, because she could not, as a
modest woman, touch any one but her husband. Hanumat,
having been taken prisoner by Ravana's son, Indrajit, and
having afterwards escaped, returned to his master with the
intelligence of Sita's whereabouts. Thereupon R^ma and the

Indian Epic Poetry, 545

monkey-king marched southward, and were joined by Vibi-
shana, Ravana's brother, who had in vain tried to dissuade
his brother from resistance against Rama. Nala, the son of
Vis'vakarman, that is of the architect of the gods, built a
pier across to Ceylon, which is supposed still to exist in the
reefs reaching from the continent to the island. By this
the monkey armies passed over ; and, after much fighting,
Ravana was at last killed by Rama in single combat. Sita,
suspected of unfaithfulness, offered to submit to an ordeal. But
whilst she was entering the flames, the gods appeared to bear
witness to her purity, and Agni himself (the god of fire) deli-
vered her up in safety to her husband. Rama, after having in-
stalled Vibishana in the place of his demon brother, returned to
Ayodhya with his wife, and henceforth occupied the throne
which Bharata had kept for him meanwhile, but which he now
vacated. The faithful Hanumat was rewarded by the gift of
perpetual life and youth.

As our readers have already had specimens of the warlike
style from the Mahabharata, we shall subjoin two passages from
the Ramayana of a different character.

The first we take from the introduction.^^ It is the Hindu
account of the invention of poetry by Valmiki, the mythical
author of the poem : " Having heard this speech of Narada"
(the messenger of the gods, who had commanded Valmiki to
sing Rama's exploits), " Valmiki, learned in speech, with his
disciples, felt great astonishment ; and in his mind the great
sage reverenced Rama, and with his disciples he saluted Na-
rada. Honoured by him, according to custom, Narada, the
divine sage, having obtained permission, returned to the abode
of the gods. As soon as Narada had gone to the world of the
celestial, Valmiki, the best of sages, went to the banks of the
Tamasa. The great sage approaching a holy bathing-place in
the Tamasa, said to his disciple who stood by his side, observing
it to be free from mud, * Behold ! 0 Bahradvaja, this bathing-
place free from gravel, clear and quiet, like the mind of good
men. This is a bathing-place still and agreeable, with good
water, with soft sand ; at this place I will enter the waters of
the Tamasa. Take thou my garment of bark, and come quickly
back from my hermitage ; do it well, so that there may be no
delay.' He quickly returning from the hermitage, according to
the words of his master, brought the dress of bark to his
master ; and having taken the dress from his disciple, put it on,
plunged into the water, bathed, and having offered the fitting
prayers in silence, and poured out libations to the Manes and
the deities, he went looking about every where in the Tamasa

h

546 Indian Epic Poetry,

forest. Then he saw on the hanks of the Tamasd, walking ahout
without fear, a couple of curlews, of beautiful aspect ; and a
hunter, approaching unseen, shot one of this couple in the pre-
sence of the sage. Seeing him in convulsions on the ground,
with his limbs overflowed with blood, the female curlew, in her
sorrow, lamented piteously, flying about in the air. When the
sage, accompanied by his disciple, saAv this bird killed in the
wood, there arose pity in his mind : then, through this feeling
of pity, the best of the Brahmans, of just mind, perceiving the
female curlew piteously crying, sang thus : * Never mayst
thou, 0 hunter, find peace for eternal years ; because thou hast
killed one of the pair of curlews that was intoxicated by love/
When he had spoken this word, he became at once thoughtful.
' What is this which I spoke pitying this bird V and having
mused for a moment and considered this speech, he said to his
disciple, Bharadvaja, v/ho stood by his side, ' This speech is
bound in four feet of an equal number of syllables ; and because
it was spoken by me in sorrow (s'ochata), therefore it shall be
called verse (s'loka)/ ''

The next passage we will give describes the interview of
Sita with her husband after her release from Havana :^^ " Thus
addressed by Rama, Vibishana, full of impatience, led forward
Sita into the presence of the noble-minded Rama. And having
heard Rama's words with regard to Sita, all the dwellers in
the wood and all his subjects, with Vibishana as their chief,
looked towards each other : ' What will Rama do now ? His
hidden anger is apparent ; it becomes visible by his looks/
Thus thinking, they all trembled seeing Rama's behaviour;
they were frightened by his unusual looks ; apprehension arose
within them. . . . And the Mithila maiden (Sita), with her body
drooping through shame, went forAvard to her husband, followed
by Vibishana. They saw her approaching as Venus in a bodily
shape, like a divinity of Lanka, like Prabha, the wife of the
sun-god. She, with Jier face wet with tears, ashamed in the
assembly of men, stood, having approached her husband, as the
beautiful S'ri [Venus] comes towards Vishnu. And also Rama,
seeing her bearing divine beauty, though his mind was full
of suspicion, did not speak to her for tears. Rama, with pale
countenance, tossed about on an ocean of anger and love, had
his eyes very red, but it pleased him to restrain his tears.
Seeing her standing before himself, the godlike lady, over-
whelmed in her mind by shame, deeply afilicted, lost in thought
like one bereft of her lord, the maiden carried off* by the
Rdkshasa through violence, afllicted by captivity, scarcely
having preserved her life, as it were, returned from the world

*' vi. 99, 37.

Indian Epic Poetry. 547

of death, taken away by force from the empty hermitage, pure-
minded, sinless, blameless, yet Rama did not speak to her.
With her eyes full of tears, ashamed in the assembly of men,
having approached her husband she wept, saying, ' 0 hero, son
of noble men.' Hearing her wailing, the chieftains all wept,
sorrow rising in them, having their eyes filled with tears. And
covering his face with his garment, Lakshmana, full of affliction,
made an effort to restrain his tears, resolved to remain firm.
Then Sita of beautiful waist, perceiving the great change in
her husband, stood before him conquering her shame. The
beautiful maiden of Videha, conquering her sorrow, and rely-
ing on her faithfulness, restraining her tears by her pure soul,
presented various aspects caused by astonishment, joy, love,
anger, and weariness, as she gazed on her husband."

We have already observed that we see no reason to re-
gard the Ramayana as older than the Mahabharata. The very
unity of the Ramayana leads to an opposite conclusion. Such
large works only arise after epic poetry has run through
many stages, and when the individual poet has a vast mass of
previous songs to serve for his education. The comparative
freedom of the Ramayana from allusions to foreign nations of
later times, is easily explained by the fact that the exploits of
its hero have the south of India for their scene. Besides,
there are not wanting allusions to the Greek kings, and even
later times. We cannot share, therefore, the naive assurance
of Gorresio, who actually believes in Yalmiki's authorship.
The only feature worth mentioning that might be adduced in
favour of a very ancient period, is the circumstance that of
Das'aratha's wives none burns herself with him ; a custom well
known to Cicero, who probably got his knowledge from the
historians of Alexander. But between a custom sometimes fol-
lowed and a necessity always to be followed, there is some
difference. That the suttee ever was a necessity it would be
difficult to prove.

The historical basis of the Ramayana is considered by
Lassen, with Avhom most competent scholars seem to agree, to
be the remembrance of the fight between the civilised Aryans
of Hindostan and the savage natives of Southern India. The
monkeys who assisted Rama are in this view the representa-
tives of that portion of the Dekhanic population that willingly
fell in with the Brahminical life. We have very little faith
in the distillation of history out of epic legends. The fact that
the Dekhan was civilised by the Aryan Hindus rests happily
on better evidence than that of the Ramayana, namely, on the
nature of that civilisation itself The poem must be judged
as a poem. For those, however, of our readers who have the

VOL. IV. 0 0

54*8 Indian Epic Poetry,

amiable weakness of wishin<]j the characters of fiction to be
made as authentic and historical as possible, we may mention
that the father at least of Sita, Janaka, king of Mithila or
Videha, seems to be a historial person, for he is mentioned in
the S'ata-patha-brahmana^^ as Janaka, king of the Kos'ala-
Videha. The Kos'ala are in the Ramayana the people of his
son-in-law, Kama.

The other epic poems of the Hindus are numerous. They
consist first of the Puranas {i.e, old legends). These are ascribed
to the same author as the Mahabharata, namely, Vdyasa. We
pointed out before that certain Vedic writings mention compo-
sitions of this name, but these compositions have nothing in
common with the works now so called except the name. We
have eighteen Puranas, but there were apparently at an earlier
period only six, as the Bhagavata-Purana states^^ that Vayasa
originally made six collections, which were communicated by
him to Romaharshana or Lomaharshana, called Suta (bard), who
taught them to six different disciples. From these Ugras'ravas,
Romaharshana's son, also called Suta, learned in his turn the
six collections. This Ugras'ravas is the same person as the
bard who recited the Mahabharata for the second time. There
seems to be nothing historical in all these traditions, except
the former existence of six Puranas. This circumstance ex-
plains why, in the eighteen which have come down to us, there
is much sameness of matter, and why often whole portions are
even identical in words. The language and style of the Pura-
nas are, upon the whole, the same as those of the Mahabharata.
As to their contents, they are a kind of mythological encyclo-
pedias, to be compared with the Bibliotheca of Apollodorus, or,
better still, with Hesiod's theogony, executed on a gigantic
scale. Most of the Puranas have besides a sectarian object, to set
forth the praise of some particular god, more especially of either
S'iva, or Vishnu, and his various incarnations. The favourite
deity of each Purana is accordingly represented as identical
with Brahma or the Absolute. These vast compilations are of
rather modern origin. The Vishnu-purana knows the Gupta
kings, whose reign began at about 170 a.d.,^^ and apparently
even the Mahometan invasions, which did not begin before
the eighth century. No wonder, therefore, that in these late
works the old warlike elements of the Mahabharata have be-
come overgrown and almost entirely smothered by the reli-

« Weber, Ind. Litt. p. 130.

*' See Boumoufs edition of it, i. p. xxxvi.

«• Wilson (^Translation of the Vishnu-purana, p, Ixxii.) says that they reigned
in the seventh century. But the above more correct date has since been as-
certained from new monuments. Their reign extended indeed to the seventh
century.

Indian Epic Poetry, 549

gious element. The exploits of the gods are described in the
most hyperbolical phraseology, tiresome in the extreme to our
European taste.

The Mahabharata is generally described in India as an
itihasa (legend), whereas the Ramayana is called a kavya
(poem). This latter name implies greater unity and indivi-
duality. There are other kavyas besides the Ramayana, the
authors of which are well known and real persons. Kalidasa
himself wrote two, the Raghu-vans'a, or history of Rhagu's
family, the race of Rama, and the Kumara-Sambhava, or
birth of Kumara, the god of war. These, though more arti-
ficial than the old epic, are still truly poetical works. But as
time went on, the Hindu epic degenerated more and more.
Such works as the Nalodaya, or history of Nala, a poem chiefly
remarkable for playing with words and rhymes ; the Sls'upala-
badha, i. e. death of Sisupala, with verses that may be read
forwards and backwards, upwards and downwards ; the Bhatti-
kavya, narrating the history of Rama so as'to exemplify in every
canto particular grammatical forms, which is done by using,
for instance, the same tense all through it; — such compositions
as these are no more poetry than the Pugna Porcorum of our
middle ages. The height of absurdity is reached by the Ra-
ghava-Pandaviya, which is written in such a manner that one
may read it, at will, as the history of Rama or of the sons of
Pandu. Works like these only show the utter extinction of all
epic spirit in their authors.

We have still to say a few words on the artistic peculiarities
of the Indian epic. Our readers are in some measure able to
form conclusions on the subject for themselves from the speci-
mens with which we have interspersed the preceding pages.
They will have remarked that there is really much poetical
power in some of them ; and they will also have observed that
the style has many points in common with the Greek. The
extensive use of similes, the repetition of certain epic formulas,
the constant application of what has not inappropriately been
called epitheta ornantia, a general tendency to spread out the
narrative and dwell on its details, are common to both. The
likeness would appear still more striking if the similarity of the
two languages in grammar could be conveyed by any transla-
tion. The epic machinery of supernatural events also, and the
close proximity and — so to speak — the terms of equality between
gods and heroes, may be added to these general features. But
we must nevertheless not forget the vast difference between
the Iliad and the Mahabharata, and, let us frankly confess it,
the inferiority of the Hindu epic. For, when the poetic litera-
ture of India was discovered by Europeans, it was natural and

550 Indian Epic Poetry,

excusable — especially if we consider the marvellous expectations
previously entertained regarding that country — that in the first
joy of the discovery of noble poems in a quarter where nobody
had looked for poetic power (but rather for primitive religion
and philosophy), men should have indulged in exaggerated en-
thusiasm. But it is time now, when we know India better, to
recover our artistic sense, and return to the Greeks with in-
creased and increasing admiration. Let us compare the Ma-
habharata with the Iliad. Putting aside the loose form of the
Indian poem, there remain other grave blemishes likely to jar
on European feelings. The peculiar Brahminical morality and
philosophy is a discordant element. This is not the place to
pass a judgment on the intrinsic merit of these doctrines.
Whatever may be thought of the Brahminical ideal of society,
the philosophical development — say, for instance, in the Bha-
gavad-Grita — is of no small power. Such a poem must for ever
occupy a memorable place in the history of philosophy, beside
Parmenides and the Stoics, beside Spinoza and Hegel. But it
is equally certain that this philosophy of the '"' One and All" is
not favourable to the simplicity and straightforwardness, the
naive energy of epic poetry. In this sense — in this merely
artistic sense, we repeat — Homer's heroes, simple as they are,
savage if you like, are vastly superior, as poetical figures, to
the warriors of the Mahabharata, who in the interval of their
battles can reason high about God and man, fate and eternity.
But this is not all. In the passage describing Kama's last
combat with Arjuna our readers will have observed the super-
abundance of similes ; and this excess of riches is a universal
feature of the Indian epic. How would Homer have dealt with
this profusion of images ? The answer is not difficult. Com-
pare for a moment the introduction to the KaToXoyo^; vrjwVj
describing in a series of similes the gathering of the Achajans
and Trojans. Instead of heedlessly scattering about compari-
sons with mountains and lotus-lakes, and lions and elephants,
the Greek poet (or poets) would have dwelt on each of these ;
depicted the lion, the elephant, the mountain, and the lotus-
lake in all their peculiar features ; describing them, delighting
in them, shaping them into clear images, and communicating
his delight and his clear perception to his hearers. And not
only the Greek poets would have dealt so with similes, but
the older Indian poets also — we mean the authors of the Yedic
songs — would have adopted a similar course. For the hymns
we have laid before our readers above are, in the simplicity
of their imagery, much more akin to the Iliad than to the
Mahabharata. It is clear, therefore, that when the Aryans
Lad reached the inner plain of Hindostan a change came

Lidian Epic Poetnj. 551

over them. The tropical sun, the strange scenery, the gigantic
nature, displayed in the vast mountains of the north, as well
as in the immense rivers of the south, the large palm-trees
and huge creeping plants, the unheard-of beasts and birds, —
all these together have influenced the Indian mind, driving
it to excess, and at the same time lulling it into weary repose.
Hence the fierce sensuaUty of their love-poems; hence, as the
opposite side of the picture, their self-renouncing, self-despair-
ing philosophy ; hence also their wild flights of fancy in the
epic. We are crowded by similes, hurried from one to another,
each splendid and glowing, but none remaining long enough
before our minds to give us a clear picture. There are snowy
mountains, wild jungles, streams with floating lotus-flowers,
elephants and tigers roaming through impervious forests, rain
and sunshine in fitful changes, sun and moon, night and morn-
ing, gods and demons in combat ; but our eyes are dazzled by
these shifting scenes, our minds grow weary, and in the midst
of palms and lotuses we long for home, for a simple northern
meadow, with a cloudy sky and scant glimpses of sunshine,
with a few daisies instead of lotuses, and instead of mighty
rivers a small brook murmuring through the grass. To speak
more precisely : Hindu epic poetry deals lavishly with similes.
When the youthful Pindar did the same, Corinna is said to
have addressed him with these warning words : " Not with the
sack [must you sow], but with the hand, 0 Pindar.'' The
Greek poet profited by the lesson; but the Indians are con-
stantly sowing with the sack.

The efiect of this superabundance of imagery is, in the first
place, want of perspicuity. The mind cannot realise so many
ideas at once. But the Hindus apparently count this want of
clearness as a merit. When in the Iliad a god disappears, he
flies away in the shape of a bird ; thus ofi'ering to the imagina-
tion, in sjfite of the miracle, something to fasten upon. The
Indian epic simply says that he disappears [antar-adhiyata],
without giving the hearer any clue to his manner of doing it.
Homer is moderate in his use of numbers ; in the Indian epic
we are constantly told that this hero reigned for thousands of
years, and that ascetic stood ten thousand years on one leg.
All this shows the comparative absence of clearness, form, and
measure. But the want of artistic shape and moderation,
though it may at first sight seem to arise from superabundance
of strength, ultimately results in weakness. In one passage^^
Arjuna is represented as using the terrible weapon of S'iva
against the Titans, and scarcely was it shot when there ap-
peared '•' thousandfold shapes of deers, of lions, tigers, bears,

^' Bopp, Arjuna-samdgama, x. 44,

552 Indian Epic Poetry.

buffaloes, snakes, cows, elephants, monkeys in heaps, bulls,
boars, and cats, s'alas, wolves, ghosts, vultures, griffins, bees,
trees, mountains, and oceans; gods, sages, and gandharvas,
vampires, yakshas, and foes of the gods," &c. *' Of these, and
many other beings of divers forms, this whole world was full,
when that weapon had been shot ; and they had three heads,
four tusks, four arms."

There is no doubt that the Indian poet means by the above
description to represent the highest effort of superhuman
strength. But now compare with this the passage of the Iliad,^
where Diomedes is said to have throAvn a stone at j£neas,
" such as two men could not lift, as mortals now are, yet he
threw it easily." How much less imposing is Diomedes than
Arjuna ! how modest the imagination of the Greek poet com-
pared with the flight the Hindu's mind has taken ! And yet
on which side is the strength — on which is the weakness ? on
which the beautiful — and on which the ridiculous?

It would be unjust, however, if, without qualification, we
were to measure the poetical productions of the Hindu by the
standard which we owe to the Greeks, and which we should
never have possessed except for them. The Hindu epic, if
not strictly faultless, has yet acted as a power creative of poetry
on other nations. For not only are there translations of the
two great poems in the modern languages of Hindostan, Bengali
and Hindustani ; but also the Dekhanic people, when they be-
came brahmanised, adopted the epic traditions of the Aryans,
and reproduced them in their own language. Indeed, these
tales were carried as far as Java by the Indian colonists. For
in Kavi, the old literary language of that island, containing a
large admixture of Sanskrit^ and formed under its influence,
we find both a Brata-Yudda (Mahabharata) and a Rama-kavi
(Ramayana). It is gratifying to dwell on these facts, which
indisputably show that the Aryan-Hindus, in spite of their
shortcomings, were yet, in epic poetry as well as in other
things, a civilised and civilising nation.

62 V. 302.

[ 553 ]

ASCETICISM AMONGST MAHOMETAN" NATIONS.

[Communicated.]

The celebrated Egyptian ascetic Dhou-el-Noun, in the third
century of the Hejirah, relates the following story of his spi-
ritual teacher Schakran, in whose person he speaks : " When
I was young, I lived on the eastern bank of the Nile, near
Cairo, and gained my livelihood by ferrying passengers across
to tlie western side. One day, as I was sitting in my boat near
the river- shore, about noon, an aged man presented himself be-
fore me; he wore a tattered robe, a staff was in his hand, and a
water-skin suspended to his neck. ' Will you ferry me over for
the love of God ?' said he. I answered, ' Yes.' ' And will you
fulfil my commission for the love of God ?' ' Yes/ Accordingly I
rowed him across to the western side. On alighting from the boat,
he pointed to a solitary tree some distance ojff, and said to me,
' Now go your way, and do not trouble yourself further about me
till to-morrow ; nor indeed will it be in your power even should
you desire it, for as soon as I have left you, you will at once forget
me. But to-morrow, at this same hour of noon, you will sud-
denly call me to mind ; then go to that tree which you see before
you ; I shall be lying dead in its shade. Say the customary
prayers over my corpse, and bury me ; then take my robe, my
statf, and the water-skin, and return with them to the other side
of the river ; there deliver them to him who shall first ask them
of you : this is my commission.' Having said this, he immediately
departed. I looked after him, but soon lost sight of him, and then,
as he had himself already forewarned me, I utterly forgot him.
But next day, at the approach of noon, I suddenly remembered
the event, and hastily crossing the river alone, I came to the
western bank, and then made straight for the tree. In its shade I
found him stretched out at full length, with a calm and smiling
face, but dead. I recited over him the customary prayers, and
buried him in the sand at the foot of the tree ; then I took the
garment, the water-skin, and the staff, and returned to my boat.
Arrived at the eastern side, I found standing on the shore to meet
me a young man, whom I knew as a most dissolute fellow of the
town, a hired musician by profession. He was gaudily dressed, his
countenance bore the traces of recent debauch, and his fingers
were stained with henna. ' Give me the bequest,' said he.
Amazed at such a demand from such a character, ' And what
bequest ?' I answered. ' The staff, the water-skin, and the gar-
ment,' was his reply. Hereon I drew them, though unwillingly,
from the bottom of the boat where I had concealed them, and

554f Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations.

gave them to him. He at once stripped off his gay clothes, put on
the tattered robe, hung the water-skin round his neck, took the
staff in his hand, and turned to depart. I, however, caught hold
of him, and exclaimed, ^ For God's sake, ere you go tell me the
meaning of this, and how this bequest has become yours, such as
I know you.' ' By no merit of my own certainly,' answered he.
'But I passed last night at a wedding feast, with many boon
companions, in singing, drinking deep, and mad debauch. As
the night wore away and morning drew near, tired out with
pleasure and heavy with wine, I lay down on the ground to
sleep. Then in my sleep one stood by me, and said, * God has
at this very hour taken to Himself the soul of the ascetic such-
a-one, and has chosen you to fill his place on earth. Rise, and
go to the river-bank ; there you will meet a ferryman in his boat ;
demand from him the bequest; he will give you a garment, a
staff, and a water-skin ; take them, and live as their first owner
lived/ Such was his story; he then bade me farewell, and went
his way. But I wept bitterly over my own loss, in that I had
not been chosen in his place as successor to the dead saint, and
thought that such a favour would have been more worthily be-
stowed on me than on him. But that same night, as I slept, I
heard a voice saying to me, ' Schakran, is it grief to thee that I
have called an erring servant of mine to repentance ? The favour
is my free gift, and I bestow such on whom I will, nor yet do I
forget those who seek me/ I awoke from sleep, and repented
of my impatient ambition.'' And so he concludes his narrative
with some verses of Arab poetry,, which we will here render as
best we may :

" The true lover seeks no self-advantage from his beloved ;
All choice on thy part, 0 lover, is treason in love ; ah, didst thou but

understand it aright !
Should He please to raise thee in His favour, it is His mere gift and

graciousness.
Or should He keep thee at a distance, thou hast no right to complain.
Nay, if thou fiudest not thy pleasure even in His seeming coldness

towards thee,
Give up thy rank among lovers, that place is not for thee.
Ah, my God, if indeed love has rendered Thee Lord of my soul.
Or has surrendered me to Thee as a bond-slave, Thine even to the death,
Grant, or deny, or keep silence, it is all one,

My glory is to be ever Thine, and that suffers nor change nor abasement.
I seek nought of Thee in love's service save Thy own good pleasure.
And if it be Thy good pleasure to treat me with coldness, that too is

mine."

Is this a passage from the lives of the Fathers of the Desert,
or from the hagiology of modern Egypt ? As he who has not
travelled abroad or become acquainted with foreign nations can
never rightly understand his own, so he who has not studied the

I

Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations. 555

history and development of other religions can but ill understand
or appreciate that which he professes. Truth is one; and reli-
gion, in its highest sense as the ultimate expression of truth, can
only be one if it is true. For religion has its objective as well
as its subjective side, and denotes the objects worshipped as they
exist in themselves, as well as in their relation to the worshipper.
Moreover, whatever differences there maybe between one reli-
gion and another objectively considered, yet subjectively religion
can have but one subject-matter, one ground upon which its line
is traced — the human mind. Infinite as are the forms, immense
the divergence between Paganism, Judaism, Christianity, and
Mahometanism, and again between their countless sections and
sub-sections, aberrations or developments, orthodoxies or heresies,
they have all as the subject-matter of such multiform variety one
common field of action — the human race. Now that religions do
really and most deeply modify, influence, determine, the cha-
racter of those who hold them, no thinking mind can doubt.
Yet the converse is equally true ; and while such varied religions
as divide among themselves the hundreds of millions of the
human species are exercising, each over its allotted section, an
influence more or less pernicious or beneficial, the one subject
mind, so diverse in its unity, so truly one in all its diversity, is
constantly and most efiicaciously reacting on its ruler, modify-
ing, restricting, developing, and bringing back in a certain mea-
sure to unity, creeds so diverse and forms so varying. The Arabs
have no truer saying in their famed proverbial store than the
favourite adage " Beni Adam," " Sons of Adam," by which they
concisely formulise the uniformity, the unity, of human mind and
conduct, amid all the variations of ages, nations, and climes.
And this holds good Avith regard to religion as to all the rest.

No one therefore should be surprised, much less scandalised,
to find in other religions, which he regards as false, pretty much
the same order of progress, of action, or of decline, as in his own,
which he regards as true. Possibly he may be right in this his
belief, possibly he may be wrong ; but right or wrong, he should
remember that the nature which forms the ground- work, or the
subject-matter, of both religions is the same.

And this fact should serve to make us less anxious to discover,
and less ardent to uphold, certain theories, whereby some endea-
vour to trace all religions to one common source, thus making
them all branches — some straighter, others more gnarled or dis-
torted— of the same common stock or tree. Religions are often,
like language, not daughters but sisters ; even the link between
them is very generally not that of consanguinity, but afiinity.
And as among trees the same general and leading features of
roots, trunk, branches, and leaves, are to be found generally with

556 Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations.

a certain uniformity in all, though their minute features and
intrinsic qualities are widely different, so is it in a measure with
religions. This consideration will serve to clear up the apparent
inconsistency of looking for asceticism among [Mahometans.
How is it possible to find asceticism in a religion based on
fatalism, "propped by sensuality, maintained and propagated by
brute- force, in which the highest type of man is the ferocious
warrior; the noblest reward proposed, a bevy of voluptuous
houris? And how can one sentence bring together words of
such opposite meaning as asceticism and Mahometanism ? or
what can they have in common ? how coexist V Asceticism,
cannot be found in Mahometanism in its absolute and ideal
character, but only as it exists subjectively; in its votaries, in
Mahometan persons and nations, it may exist, however incon-
sistent it may be with the theory of the religion. True it is that
Mahometanism as such seems absolutely to exclude from its
range not only whatever might bear the name of ascetic, but
even the virtues and ideas that could serve as a basis to asceti-
cism. And so in fact it did for a while, that is, during a short
period of early vigour, and whilst the action of the new and in-
vading principle was strong enough to smother the reaction of
the human mind, and resist whatever modifications such reaction
might strive to impress on it. But so complete a triumph was
not of long duration; internal development, however contrary
to the real and original intentions and tendencies of the new
system, went on and strengthened, till, fostered and excited by
external influences, unavoidable too in the course of events, a
new creation appeared, — new as to the ground it thus occupied,
yet nowise new, rather very old, in itself. And thus asceticism,
so long known and prevalent in the ancient religions of India
and China, in Buddhism and Brahminism, not entirely repressed
by Grecian symbolism or Roman materialism, fostered in the
Egyptian temples and not excluded by the simplicity of the
Sinaitic law, familiar to the teachings of Zoroaster, and long
since dominant and brought to a yet fuller and nobler form
under the kindred influence of Christianity, found place for its
roots and outspread its branches in the ungenial soil of Ma-
hometanism itself.

What was its origin, to what influences it owed its first rise
and rapid propagation, how far doctrines or practices, remem-
brances or anticipations, strange to the law and credence of Islam
gave it strength or form, its history will best show. It is our
object to trace this history as far as our limits will permit. Much
will remain unsaid ; yet it is something to open the first line of
investigation in a subject of such manifold interest and bearing.

No doubt can be entertained by any one who has attentively

Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations. 557

studied the Coran, or considered the life of Mahomet as known
in contemporary, or at least in early Arab, tradition, that the
camel-driver of the Hedjaz was as adverse to all approach to
asceticism in theory as he was remote from it in practice. This
is shown by his often-repeated words ; and certainly his personal
history in no way belied them ; and such too were, as might
have been expected, the tendencies of the religion he founded.
A short and uniformly monotonous form of prayer ; a few ex-
ternal ceremonies, almost all intimately connected with Avhatever
is most animal, most debasing in human nature ; a most servile
fear of a most material hell ; a most base desire of a heaven of
wine and harlots ; a blind and inexorable destiny for God ; and
a crowd of slaves for creatures or worshipers ; — such is Islam, as
Mahomet conceived it, and as such he constantly preached it.
Certainly the law and the lawgiver had little of the ascetic
in them!! And the " Sahih,'' the " Mischkat el Mesabih," and
similar documents, attest with what energy, ^' in season and out
of season," he endeavoured to render his first followers and com-
panions even as he was ; nor without success.

Yet even in his lifetime an attempt was made to engraft on
this strange trunk a branch of very different growth. The facts
are well known. One evening, after some more vigorous decla-
mations than usual on the prophet's part, — he had taken for his
theme the flames and tortures of hell, — several of his most zealous
companions, among whom the names of Omar, Ali, Abou-Dharr,
and Abou-Horeirah are conspicuous, retired to pass the night to-
gether in a neighbouring dwelling. Here they fell into deep dis-
course on the terrors of divine justice, and the means to appease or
prevent its course. The conclusion they came to was nowise unna-
tural. They agreed that to this end the surest way was to abandon
their wives, to pass their lives in continued fast and abstinence, to
wear hair-cloth, and practise other similar austerities : in a word,
they laid down for themselves a line of conduct truly ascetic,
and leading to whatever can follow in such a course. But they
desired first of all to secure the approbation of Mahomet. Ac-
cordingly, at break of day they presented themselves before him,
to acquaint him with the resolution of the night, as well as its
motives and purport ; but they had reckoned without their host.
The prophet rejected their proposition with a sharp rebuke, and
declared marriage and war to be far more agreeable to the Divinity
than any austereness of life or mortification of the senses what-
ever : and the well-known passage of the Coran, " O true be-
lievers, do not abstain from the good things of the earth which
God permits you to enjoy," — revealed, of course, by Gabriel on
this very occasion, — remains a lasting monument of Mahomet^s
disgust at this premature outbreak of ascetic feeling.

558 yUceiicism amongst Mahometan Nations,

Such a lesson, joined to many others of a similar character,
was not likely to be soon forgotten. For a century after the
prophet's death we hardly find any authentic manifestation of the
same tendency. Continued warfare, sometimes against the sur-
rounding nations, sometimes, and with equal animosity, among
themselves ; the intoxicating excitement of a new and vast
sphere of life and action, in which all more or less participated ;
the charms of plundered wealth, of captive beauty, of fair lands
subdued, — lands which to the half-starved natives of the barren
Hedjaz seemed the very paradise promised as future recompense,
— Egypt and Syria, Persia and the islands of the Mediterranean,
Africa and the Indus ; — all this was little calculated to foster in the
flushed conquerors ascetic ideas or corresponding practices. One
family alone seems from the very outset to have manifested the
germs of an opposite disposition. Ali, the son of Abou-Zhalib, and
his numerous race, gave proofs first of a mystic, then of an as-
cetic, turn of mind, destined to exercise in after ages, down to the
present day, and probably as long as Islam shall have being, a
strange and deep influence on the Mahometan world. Their early
establishment on the frontiers of Persia, the study or contact of
Persian ways and literature, much contributed to bring out and
to modify in them their peculiar inclinations. It was in fact in
the very lands formerly subject to the Persian rule and religion
that Mahometanism, as we shall soon see, admitted — first in a few
scattered instances and hesitatingly, then widely spread and fully
— the new school, so different from, nay so opposite to, that of its
founder. Yet the love of study, a remarkable delicacy of feeling,
and a high, even over-wrought, enthusiasm might have sufficed
alone to produce such a result in the family of Ah, even in-
dependently of similar influences ; and in fact, if Ali himself, his
son Hasan, his grandson Zein el Abidin, and after them Djaufar es-
Sadik, Mousa el Kadhim, Ali er-Ridha, and others of their race,
were successively looked up to by the ascetic brotherhood as
guides and instructors in word and deed, yet they never seem to
have given in to the pantheistic or Manichsean tendencies so
remarkable at a later period among the derviches of Persia. But,
as their lives and actions are, to a certain extent, known in
Europe, we shall pass over their detail in silence, and content
ourselves with having thus indicated once for all a family which
was the very backbone, so to speak, of the ascetic frame, to dwell
more fully on those less known in our Western world, though
most deserving of serious and discerning attention.

For brevity's sake, we shall not note down, one by one,
the authorities whence these same facts or events are derived,
contenting ourselves with here indicating their names once for
all. Ebn Khallican, Moukri, the Nablousi, Abd el Ghani, the

ifi

Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations, 559

Souk el Aschwak, Roudhat el Abrar, El AkWak es-Sabaa, the
writings of Mohi ed Din el Hamavvi, of Omar Ebn Faridh, of
the Ghazali, of the Kalyoubi, the Anwar el Kadisich, the Kibrit
el Ahraar have furnished us with the greater part of the facts
and dates here cited ; oral tradition, gathered in intimate inter-
course with many yet living among the mystics and ascetics
themselves, has supplied a lesser share. Nor do we pretend here
to determine the amount of historical credit due to these works
or authors, such historical criticism belonging to another and
different study. Valeant quantum valent. After all sifting and
pondering, a very considerable residue will remain. The events
recorded, the sayings reported, were mostly public, and subjected
in their very age to the examen of doubt, scepticism, and hosti-
lity. Nor do we attempt to explain, to account for, these phe-
nomena. We have indeed a very definite, and to us certain,
idea as to their origin and character ; and our readers will pro-
bably have one also. But to resume our narrative.

The first historical outbreak of ascetic feeling had been, w^e
have already seen, spontaneous, and of an Arab character among
Arabs. But the lawgiver himself was still alive ; he set his
own full influence against it, and stifled it in the germ. War
and conquest, with all their train, prevented its speedy reappear-
ance. But now the first ardours of movement and novelty had
subsided; the sword was, in many regions, sheathed; and another
generation had sprung up, accustomed from their birth to the
gardens of Damascus or the rose-groves of Schiraz, and through
very custom less sensible to their charms, no longer new. Mean-
while the great mass of the conquered populations, though out-
wardly professing Islam — nay inwardly believing it — yet re-
tained, even unavoidably, much of their old feelings and heredi-
tary creeds. And the first country where all these circumstances
combined to produce their necessary result was, as might have
been expected, Persia.

Its inhabitants, whether followers of Zoroaster or allied to
their near neighbours the Indians, had already been for ages in
presence of mystical ideas and ascetic practices, and had largely
imbibed them. Besides, they were far removed by lands and
seas from the original centre and radiating focus of Arab Maho-
metanism ; and difference of race, added in a great number to the
Schiite divergence of creed, rendered them antipathetic, if not to
the rehgion and law, at least to the ways and practices of the
Arabs. These last had at first rejected — put down — asceticism in
every form or fashion ; this was already a strong reason for the
others to patronise and adopt it. The result was not long in
showing itself.

560 Jsceliclsm amongst Mahometan Nations,

Zaous, Abou Abd er- Rahman, of Persian origin, but bom
in the Yemen, led the way. He had passed his early youth in
the society of Zein el Abidin, the son of Hasan, and grandson of
All, and the first of that family who embodied in his manner of
life, as in his writings, those mystical ideas and austere practices
"which afterwards distinguished the race. Abou-Horeirah, the
devoutest of Mahomet's own companions, and Ebn Abbas, re-
nowned for his reHgious lore and unreproached conduct, were
also his masters. He took up his abode at Mecca, and there dis-
tinguished himself by the severity of his life as w^ell as by the
peculiarity of his dress, having adopted the high w^oollen cap, the
soufi, whence in process of time arose the title of Soufi, given
to ascetics of his class, as well as the long and patched garment
entitled the khirkah, distinctive of the future brotherhood. ]\Iecca
was no longer the abode of the Caliphs, or centre of government.
The death of Othman, in transferring the supreme power to Ali,
had given the rank of capital in the Mahometan world for a mo-
ment to Coufa ; and later still the family of Ommiah had fixed
their royal residence at Damascus. But it was still the centre
of religious feeling, and crowds of pilgrims from all parts of the
empire, and especially from Pesra, Balkh, Bokhara, and their
neighbourhood, tiirouged its streets, or adopted there a more
permanent dwelling. Among these Zaous soon found numerous
disciples and imitators, whom he admitted to that secret doc-
trine which he had learned from the grandson of Ali, while the
•uninitiated crowd contented themselves with admiring his long
prayers, his fasts, and extreme poverty, and above all his open
contempt for all worldly dignity and rank. Of these ^'irtues
many examples are recorded in his history, as we have it from
numerous authors of a later date; but we must exclude them
from this narrative. Zaous died in the 102d year of the Maho-
metan era, but not without leaving many and zealous successors
in Mecca itself, besides those who carried back to their own
native countries the memory and imitation of their master.

One of the most distinguished of these was Hasan Yesar, like
Zaous, of Persian origin, but born like him in Arabia, at the
town of Medinah, where his mother had been brought as a cap-
tive and sold to 0mm Salma, one of the numerous wives of the
Prophet. Arrived at man's estate, and having received his
liberty, he retired to Basra on the Persian Gulf, a town well
known for its attachment to the family of Ali and their doc-
trines, and henceforth a stronghold of the ascetic sect. Here he
lived undisturbed, though his open disavowal of the reigning
family of Ommiah exposed him to some danger, against which,
however, the popular veneration proved his safeguard. During

I

Jsceticism amongst Mahometan Nations, 561

the reign of Yejid, son of Maaowlah, founder oftheOmraiade
dynasty, he gave public proof of his politico-religious opinions.
This caliph having nominated Omar-Ebn Hobeirah governor
of the province, this last sent for Hasan Yesar, along with several
individuals renowned for learning and piety in the town of Basra,
to consult them, whether feignedly or not, on the validity of his
appointment by Yejid. The companions of Hasan gave a courtly
and temporising answer. Hasan kept silence till pressed to speak.
He replied, " Son of Hobeirah, God makes light of Yejid, but
Yejid cannot make light of God; for God can protect you against
Yejid, and Yejid cannot protect you from God; yet know the
time is nigh when God will send against you an angel to make
you descend from your throne, and to drag you from your
spacious castle to a narrow tomb; and then naught can save
you except your owm works, O son of Hobeirah. But if you
needs must disobey God, know that God ordained human
power as a means of defence to His religion and to His ser-
vants. And how can you abuse God-ordained power to oppress
that religion and the servants of God ? No creature can exact
as obedience disobedience to the Creator." The new governor
trembled, and abstained from reply or comment.

One of Hasan's favourite sayings was, " I never knew an
undoubted certainty liker among men to an uncertain doubt
than death." His life proved his own freedom from the general
illusion; and his death, w^hlch occurred in the year 110 of the
Hejira, was cheered by visions of glory.

Another of the disciples of Zaous, named Abou Mohammed
Ata, a Negro and a slave by birth, coeval with Hasan, inhabited
Mecca, where he is said to have exercised a great influence over
the pilgrims to that town. But a certain tendency to practical
immorality, not uncommon in overstrained mysticism, appears
to have betrayed itself in his teachings. We shall meet with
striking examples of this hereafter. However, Mecca and Me-
dlnah were too near to Syria, and the influence of the Ommiade
dynasty, to be suitable localities for the permanent residence of
the doctors of the new school. As the distinction between the
east and the west of the Mahometan empire became more and
more marked, the lines of orthodox sensualism and of ambiguous
or heterodox mysticism were more fully drawn out ; and while
the west appeared awhile as the stronghold of the former, the
east gave a ready shelter to the latter. Mecca alone continued
to form a sort of exception, the pilgrimage uniting there all the
various schools of doctrine and their teachers, especially during
the annual solemnities attending the pilgrimage ; and thus the
place continued a centre of meeting, though no longer of habi-
tation, to the ascetic faction.

562 Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations.

Basra was now their head-quarters. For a full century we
shall find it such, till the dynasty of the Moghrebins and Fati-
mites in Africa and Egypt at last rendered Cairo in the west
much what Basra had been at the outset in the east. But this
was yet to come.

Malik Ebn Dinar, a Persian and a slave by birth, adorned
by his virtues, amongst which the love of manual labour, united
with its sister-qualities of poverty and humility, was eminently
conspicuous, next appeared as chief among the ascetics of his
age. He flourished in the second century of Islam, and enjoyed
the friendship and esteem of the personages then most noted
for learning or piety. His frequent citations of the Bible might
almost give rise to a suspicion of Christian tendencies, or at least
warrant the belief that he counted among his masters in the
mystic school others than Zaous and the inhabitants of Mecca.
He died at Basra in the year 131 of the Hejirah.

Not less celebrated in his day was Omar Abou Othman,
born in the Hedjaz, but, like most of those above mentioned, of
Persian origin. He also inhabited Basra, and was a disciple of
Hasan Yesar, who described him as one worthy of angels and
prophets for preceptors and guides, — one who never exhorted
save to what he had first put in practica, nor deterred from any
thing except what he inviolably abstained from. Like his master,
he possessed an admirable freedom of spirit in his intercourse
with the great, whose proffers he steadily refused to accept, and
an extreme affability towards the poor. He was a vigorous as-
sertor of the free-will of man against the predestinarian systems
then developing into dogma. At his death he turned to one of
the assistants, and said, " Death has come on me and found me
unprepared ;" then, addressing himself to God, he added, " O
Lord, thou knowest that I never had to choose between two
things, — one according to thy good will, and the other pleasing
to myself, — but I preferred thy good will to my own satisfaction,
and now my hope is in thy mercy." He died in the 144th year
of the Hejirah.

About the same time Omar Abou Durr and Sofein Abou
Abd Allah displayed — the one at Coufa, the other at Basra —
similar examples of austerity and virtue. Hammad Abou
Ismail, son of the celebrated Abou Hanifah, Abd Allah Me-
rouji, and Moliammed Ebn es-Semmak, distinguished them-
selves in the same region and by the same conduct. Ebn es-
Semmak possessed a high degree of eloquence, and often spoke
in public. Many of his sayings are preserved ; amongst which
the sentence, " Fear God as though you had never obeyed Him,
and hope in God as though you had never sinned against Him,"
may well be considered worthy of a Christian preacher.

Asceticism amongst Mohametan Nations, 5QS

But whether at Mecca or at Basra, the various ascetics above
mentioned, and numerous others, especially in the second century
of Islam, — here omitted for brevity's sake, — whatever personal
influence they might exercise, or whatever virtues they might
practise, had never formed a particular and distinct association
or brotherhood. No common rule united them ; no one was in
any rigorous sense superior or director of the rest ; they lived
each according to his own special character; in a word, they were
individuals, not an order or a body. But now appeared one
who modified advantageously the character of their existence,
and, by establishing a strict union and brotherhood among them,
assured the permanence of their asceticism while he heightened
their enthusiasm, developed their hitherto uncertain theory,
and organised its practice, — the founder and father of the nu-
merous Derviche family, the celebrated Fodheil Abou Ali Zali-
kani. Born, like the greater number of those already mentioned,
of Persian parents (he was a native of the province of Khoras-
san), he had been in early youth a highway robber, and aban-
doned to all the vices w^hich accompany such a mode of exist-
ence. One night he had scaled the walls of a house where a
girl of whom he was enamoured dwelt, and, concealed on the
roof, awaited the moment to descend and gratify his passion.
But while thus occupied he heard a voice repeating the well-
known verse of the Coran : " Is it not high time for those who
believe to open their hearts to compunction ?" *' Lord, it is high
time indeed," replied Fodheil; and leaving the house, as w^ell
as his evil design, he retired to a half-ruined caravansarai not
far off, there to pass the rest of the night. Several travellers
were at the moment lodged in the caravansarai ; and, concealed
by the darkness, he overheard their conversation. "Let us
start on our journey," said one ; and the others answered, " Let
us wait till morning, for the robber Fodheil is out on the
roads." This completed the conversion of the already repent-
ant highwayman. He advanced towards the travellers, and,
discovering himself to them, assured them that henceforth
neither they nor any others should have ought to fear from him.
He then stripped himself of his weapons and worldly gear, put
on a patched and tattered garment, and passed the rest of his
life in wandering from place to place, in the severest penitence
and in extreme poverty, sometimes alone, sometimes with
numerous disciples, whom he took under his direction, and
formed into a strict and organised brotherhood. But with all
his austerity of life, his prolonged fasts and watchings, his
ragged dress and wearisome pilgrimages, he preferred the
practice of interior virtue and purity of intention to all out-
ward observances, and used often to say that " he who is modest

VOL. lY. p p

$6^ Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations,

and compliant to others, and lives in meekness and patience,
gains a higher reward by so doing than if he fasted all his days,
and watched in prayer all his nights/' At so high a price did he
place obedience to a spiritual guide, and so necessary did he
deem it, that he declared, " Had I a promise of whatever I
should ask in prayer, yet would I not offer that prayer save in
union with a superior." But his favourite virtue was the love
of God in perfect conformity to His will, above all hope or fear.
Thus when his only son — whose virtues resembled his ftither^s —
died in early age, Fodheil was seen with a countenance of
unusual cheerfulness ; and being asked by his intimate disciple
Ragi Abou Ali, afterwards Kadhi of the town of Rei, the reason
wherefore, he answered : " It was God's good pleasure, and it
is therefore my good pleasure also.'' " To leave ought undone
for the esteem of men is hypocrisy, and to do ought for their
esteem is idolatry," were also his words. "Nay, much is he
beguiled who serves God from fear or hope, for His true ser-
vice is for mere love," and, speaking of himself, " I serve God
because I cannot help serving Him for very love's sake," — are
expressions of his more worthy in truth of admiration than of
sinister comment.

An often-repeated anecdote relating to this extraordinary
man may here find place, though perhaps not unknown to some
of our readers. Haroun er-Rashid, the celebrated Caliph of
Bagdad, was on his way to Mecca. The road from Coufa to
the gates of the sacred city had been strewn with the finest
carpets; and whatever luxury and power could minister to
lighten the fatigues of the pious but laborious journey sur-
rounded the prince. While thus advancing by easy stages on
his ornate way, he fell in with Fodheil, who, alone and on
foot, according to his invariable custom, crossed his path. The
Caliph, already acquainted with him, but desirous of yet
further intimacy, detained the unwilling ascetic for some hours
under a silken tent. After a long conversation, when the
instances of Fodheil had at last procured him permission to
depart, Haroun said to him, "Tell me, have you ever met
with any one of greater detachment than yourself?" "Yes,"
answered Fodheil, "I have." "And who can that be?" re-
joined the Caliph. "You yourself," answered the ascetic.
" God bless us V said Haroun, in utter amazement ; " what do
you mean ?'^ " Yes," answered Fodheil, " it is even so : your
detachment is greater than mine ; for I have only detached my-
self from this Avorld, which is little and perishable, while you,
as it seems, have detached yourself from the next, which is
immense and everlasting." But the life of Fodheil alone would,
if given at length, suffice for a volume ; we pass over accord-

Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations. 565

irigly innumerable doings and sayings of authentic record, as
well as wonders and miracles of perhaps more equivocal authen-
ticity, to continue the history of the master in some of his prin-
cipal disciples.

Fodheil died in the year 187 of the Hejira. In his lifetime
the famous Ibrahim Ebn Adhem, son of noble parents, in the
town of Balkh in Khorassan, had been his most cherished fol-
lower and nearest imitator. Unlike his master, he had been
remarkable for his pious inclinations from his earliest youth ;
but it was under the direction of Fodheil that he abandoned his
worldly hopes to enter on a life of poverty and humiliation.
Seventeen times he went on pilgrimage to Mecca across the
whole breadth of the Arabian peninsula, without guide or pro-
visions, putting his trust in God alone. It is said that, being
once on the point of perishing with thirst in the sandy desert,
he begged of God a draught of water, and immediately an angel
stood before him with a full pitcher in his hand. But Ebn
Adhem repented of his over-haste in demanding this solace, and
requested the angel only to pour the water over his burning
head instead of giving it him to drink. The angel complied,
and at the same instant his thirst and weariness vanished, and
so he arrived safely at his journey's end.

Returned to his native town, as he passed through the streets
in beggar's guise, a soldier who had known him in wealth and
nobility, irritated at seeing him thus, as he thought, disgrace his
family, met him mid-way and struck him on the face. " God
bless you,'' said Ibrahim, and continued his way without other
notice. But the soldier, emboldened by his forbearance, followed
him in the crowd, and struck him again yet more brutally.
Ibrahim gave the same answer ; and when the soldier repeated
the insult a third time, " God bless you" was still the reply.
But the arm of the soldier was suddenly paralysed, and he fell
on the ground in convulsions. The bystanders, witnesses of the
outrage and of its consequences, broke out into half-adoring
admiration of the patient ascetic. But he, unwilling to receive
their honours, fled, and did not stay till he joined next day a
band of his companions, disciples of Fodheil, like himself, out-
side the town. They, supposing that the punishment of the
soldier (who had meantime, however, been restored to health)
was the result of a curse from Ibrahim, received him with re-
proaches. "You have made a most unnecessary display, and
have disgraced the ascetic garment," said they. "Not I,"
answered Ibrahim. " God is my witness I only prayed to Him
for good ; but the Master of the face was jealous over it as His
own;" implying that God had taken his cause in hand, and
regarded the insult given him as addressed to Himself

566 Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations.

This forbearance under injury, and reluctance to have" their
right manifested before men, is one of the most prominent fea-
tures in the disciples of Fodheil. A young man among his
followers, whose name is not recorded, was, according to a
celebrated writer, on his way in the desert, along with several
worldly companions — merchants, soldiers, &c. They showed
him much ill-will, and he bore it patiently. At last, one day
they came to a well, whose scanty waters could only be reached
by a bucket attached to a long rope. When all had satisfied
their thirst, the young ascetic approached to quench his own.
But one of the bystanders struck the bucket from his hand with
such violence that it slipped from the noose, and fell to the
bottom of the well. The disciple of Fodheil hid his face between
his hands, thanking God for this severe mortification. But a
noise and shaking like that of a distant earthquake was heard
and felt, and the water rose in the well till it reached the rim,
bearing the bucket along with it. The ascetic fled from the
admiration of men, and did not again appear during the journey.
Beturned to Damascus some months after, one of the merchants
saw the same youth stretched on a heap by the roadside in utter
destitution and misery. " Are not you he," said the merchant,
" at whose prayer the w^ell filled with water ? and whence now
this wretched condition?" "Were it not for such abasement
as this I had not found such honour," answered the dying
youth. We have selected this one among hundreds of parallel
examples.

Ibrahim el Adhem died before his master. But the main
work was done; and the ascetic impulse, now embodied in at
hierarchical form, had nothing to fear from the loss of any single
individual, however eminent.

After the death of Fodheil we find the supreme direction
of the brotherhood confided to Bischar el Hafi, njitive of Meron,
and inhabitant of Bagdad. When young he had, like Fodheil,
led a reckless life, till one day walking in the streets he saw
written on a piece of paper, torn and trampled on by the feet of
the passers-by, the name of God. He picked it up and, having
cleaned it to the best of his ability, took it home and placed it
out of the reach of further profanation. The same night he
heard a voice saying to him, " Bischar, thou hast honoured my
name, and I will accordingly render thy name honourable in
this world and in that to come.^' He awoke from sleep a changed
man, and began a new life of penance and virtue.

The name *' Hafi" signifies barefoot It was given him on
the following occasion. One of his shoes having given way, he
took it to a cobbler to get it repaired. But the artisan, thinking
the work hardly worth doing (in which he was probably not far

Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations. 567

wrong), answered him with an angry *^ What a plague you are
with your shoe ! is it worth while troubling a man about that ?"
Bischar threw away on the spot both that which he held in his
hand and the other from his foot, and never wore shoes again.
His fast was so severe that he would not even touch food that
had any thing of man's preparation in it. His greatest trial was
from the veneration of men : " O God,^' he used to say, ** save
me from this honour, the requital of which may perchance be
confusion in another life." He died about the beginning of the
third century of the Hejira.

A little before this a remarkable example of the power of
the ascetic impulse over the human mind had been given in the
person of Ahmed, the third son of Haroun er-Raschid, This
lad — for he was at the time only sixteen or seventeen years of
age — after a childhood passed in resisting the seductions of his
father's splendid court, suddenly abandoned the palace and the
capital, and hid himself in Basra, where for a long while he
eluded his father's anxious search. Disguised as a mason, he
lived among the day-labourers of the town, and passed about
three years in the most entire detachment from all that the
world can offer ; what little remained from the wages of his
labour he gave to the poor, and never reserved any thing from
one day to the next. When near twenty years of age he fell
ill, and, unwilling even then to seek human help, or to discover
his real name (he had borne the assumed title of Gherib, i.e. the
stranger), he wasted away, abandoned by all, at the entrance of
the cemetery of the town, stretched on a piece of old matting,
with a stone for pillow. When at the point of death, he sent for
a wealthy inhabitant who had once shown him kindness, and
gave him a precious jewel, which he had borne about him in
secret, the gift of his mother Zobeidah to him when a child.
This, without any explanation or disclosure of his real quality,
he gave to his friend, telling him to bear it to the Caliph at
Bagdad, and to add that he who sent it wished him at his last
hour such happiness as he himself now enjoyed. He then re-
mained in silent prayer a few hours, and died ; he was buried
among the poor in the common cemetery. When his father
and mother had recognised the token of this new Alexis, they
wept bitterly. But the Caliph said, " I weep not for him, but for
myself; the gainer is my son, the loser I." He then visited
his burying-place at Basra, and caused a magnificent monument
to be erected on the spot.

Before closing the series of detailed narration (which if
•carried on for the following centuries would lead us too far), we
must mention yet one more hero of asceticism, remarkable for
having laid in Egypt the foundations of this mystic school, of

568 Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations,

which he was one of the brightest ornaments, as well as for
having been the first to undergo that persecution which after-
wards cost the lives of many. It is indeed wonderful how such
persecution, though often threatened, had not yet in fact reached
those whose whole lives, not to say their doctrines (of which
more hereafter, but they were secret as yet) were an open
disavowal of, nay a contradiction to, the teaching and examples
of the Prophet. Abou el Faidh Thouban, more commonly
known by the title of Dhou-el-Noun, of Nubian descent, offers
at the beginning of the third century so wondrous a history of
superhuman virtues and supernatural prodigies, that we are com-
pelled to acknowledge the Egyptian equal or superior to any of his
Persian predecessors or contemporaries. He visited many lands,
and never took with him any provision for his journey; confidence
in God and contempt of the world were his favourite virtues.

At this time Cairo, had become, what it still is, one of the
most vicious as well as one of the most populous cities of the
East. Dhou-el-jN'oun signalised himself by his open rebuke of
the vices of the inhabitants, and especially of the local go-
vernors, who caused him to be often beaten and imprisoned,
a conduct which only drew from him expressions of resignation
and joy. " All this is as nothing so I be not separated from
Thee, 0 my God," was his exclamation while dragged through
the crowded street, with blows and insults by the soldiers of the
garrison. He was even sent, as guilty of treason and heresy, —
an accusation which his disavowal of the existing Caliphate in
the person of Motawakhel Billah, and his mystical doctrines
might seem to justify, — to Bagdad, then the seat of government.
But when led before the Caliph he spoke with such vigour and
unction on the necessity of repentance and the vanity of the
world, that Motawakhel caused his chains to be struck off, and
sent him back with esteem and safe-conduct to Egypt. Three
things he daily asked of God in prayer. The first was never to
have any certainty of his means of subsistence for the morrow.
The second was never to be in honour among men. And the third
and last was to see God's face in mercy at his death-hour. Near
the end of his life, one of his more intimate disciples ventured
to question him on this triple prayer, and what had been its
result. " As for the first and second petitions," answered Dhou-
el-Noun, " God has liberally granted them, and I trust in His
goodness that He will not refuse me the third." He died in the
year 245, and his tomb is still an object of popular veneration
at Cairo. But his disciples continued his work; and a new and
vigorous centre of asceticism was thus permanently establislied
in Egypt, and soon became connected with the yet austerer
schools of Africa and the West.

I

Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations, 569

Between this century and the next, two events occurred of
great importance to the disciples of the mystic school. We
have seen their gradual progress from the state of separate
and disconnected individuals to that of united bands or com-
panies under a single head, and acknowledging a supreme re-
ligious authority quite independent of caliph, doctor, or imam.
Yet they had hitherto no common dwelling or fixed meeting-
place in the towns they frequented ; nay, this erratic and un-
stable kind of life seemed to them most in accordance wdth the
extreme poverty and detachment which they professed. It was
also in some part owing to the strong Arab tinge of character
which pervaded them ; for although most of them were, as we
have already seen, of Persian or Ethiopian parentage, yet many
of them had been born in, and all inhabited, countries where the
Arab language and population prevailed ; and their pilgrimages
to Mecca doubtless yet further fostered this tendency. But the
Persian character is of a more domiciliary cast ; and there could
be little doubt that the ascetics inhabiting the eastern provinces
would sooner or later settle in what w^e may here call, for Avant
of a better name, convents or monasteries. While those pro-
vinces continued under Arab government, such a measure could
hardly have been tolerated. But already the great empire of
the Abbaside Caliphs was falling into decay, and the tributary
dynasty of the Samanide princes, founded about the year 260
of the Hejira by Ismail es-Samani, soon extended from Bokhara
over the neighbouring regions of Balkh, Samarcand, and Kho-
rassan, and became a true Persian government, dependent in
little more than name on the Arab Caliph of Bagdad.

All the princes of the Samanide race were remarkable foi
their patronage of learning and piety. But Nasser Ebn Ahmed,
third in the royal succession, signalised himself by his love of
retirement and religious meditation. He founded an oratory
at Bokhara for that purpose ; and it soon became the resort of
numerous ascetics. Other similar buildings arose throughout
the kingdom ; and the Derviches of the East now took on them
their permanent name and manner of life.

The second event which signalised this era was the outbreak
of open heterodoxy in the ascetic faction. From the very out-
set their tenets had been opposed, like their practice, to the
prevailing system. But few and scattered amidst an immense
population, still in all the fresh vigour of fanaticism, they found
concealment of these tenets absolutely necessary. Thus Ali
Zein el Abidin, grandson of the famous Ali, and grand -master,
€0 to speak, of the secret sect, says of himself, in verses pre-
served to our day, — he was no mean poet, — what we give in as
faithful a translation as we can ;

570 Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations,

"Above all things I conceal the precious jewel of my knowledge.
Lest the uninitiated should behold it, and be bewildered ;
Ah, how many a rare jewel of this kind, should I openly display it,
Men would say to me, * Thou art one of the worshippers of idols j'
And zealous Muslims would set my blood at price.
Deeming the worst of crimes an acceptable and virtuous action."

Such were the fears and such the conduct of his disciples or
imitators for two centuries. But once numerous, and having
learned their strength from their union, they began to think
concealment less necessary, and at last aspired to substitute
their dogmas for those of Islam.

They had indeed borrowed much, as far as doctrine went,
from the old Persian creed, and yet more from the Christian.
The ideas of a radiant Divinity mediating between the Supreme
Fountain-head of being and the created world ; of an all-per-
vading Spirit whose manifestation was in love ; of detachment
from material and visible objects; of poverty, humility, and
obedience as the true path to God ; the belief even in Divine
Incarnation and a Deity as man conversing with men ; — these
ideas, if not absolutely derived from Christianity, were at least
fostered by it and near of kin. Other more pantheistic ten-
dencies, such as Divine absorption, universal manifestation of
the Deity under the seeming appearances of limited forms, the
final return of all things to the unity of God, a tendency some-
times also to regard matter as intrinsically impure and evil,
and in certain instances an absolute reprobation of marriage,
united again, as might be anticipated, with monstrous and
shameful sensuality, — were to be remarked especially in those
whose habitation as well as their origin attached them to the
old Persian traditions, whence a considerable share of these
tenets doubtless originated. The Arabs dwelling in brother-
hood were nearer to Christianity ; the Persian to the teaching
of Zoroaster or Manes.

Meanwhile a continual, though often repressed, effort per-
vaded the East to throw off the rule of the Ommiade or Ab-
baside Caliphs, and to substitute for them the real or pretended
descendants of Ali. The history of the Khowaridj, of the Is-
mailiens, of the Rowafidhs, continued in later times by the
Fatimites of Egypt, by the Druses, and by the Soufi dynasty of
Persia, affords at once the evidence and the result of this effort.
With this the ascetic movement often blended; and thus the over-
throw of the family and religion of Mahomet, in order to substi-
tute in its place that of Ali, or some new system of the mystics
themselves, became a scheme common and familiar to all.

Accordingly, while the political rebels attacked the govern-
ment by open force, the mystics undermined its religious hold
on the people, at first in secret, at last with more daring pub-

Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations, 571

licity. And though their reputation, often well deserved, of
high personal virtue, nay miraculous sanctity, screened them at
times from orthodox severity, yet they not unfrequently fell its
victims. Thus perished at Bagdad, in the year 309 of the Hejira,
Hosain Abou Meghith el Halladj, though not till after he had
founded a new and well-defined school of doctrine, destined to
count among its professors in later times three names of gigantic
reputation and influence in the East, — the ascetic Abd-el-Kadir
el Ghilani, the doctor Mohi ed-Din Ebn-Aarabi el Moghrebi,
and the poet Omar Ebn el Faridh, author of the celebrated
Divan, unrivalled in depth and beauty, which bears his name.

Hosain el Halladj was a native of Baidha, a village near
Schiraz, but educated in the province of Irak, in the neigh-
bourhood of Coufa. Thence he came to Bagdad, where, like
other ascetics of his age, he lived by the labour of his hands,
and became a disciple of Djenid Abou Kasim, equally famous
for sanctity and mysticism in that town, though of most ques-
tionable orthodoxy. But Halladj soon outdid his master in every
way. His fasts were prolonged to three or four continuous days,
and were accompanied by ecstasies, in which he was often said
to be seen raised from the earth and surrounded with light. In
this state he often gave utterance to strange expressions, denot-
ing an intimate union with the Deity ; and the verses he com-
posed in his calmer moments have not unfrequently the same
purport. Such are these :

*',I am He whom I love, and He whom I love is I ;
We are two spirits, inhabiting one outward frame :
And when you behold me, you behold Him,
And when you behold Him, you behold us twain."

He taught the freedom of the human will, and denied the pre-
destinarian system of Islam, on which he wrote the following
bitter satire, in verses of no ordinary beauty, and frequently
repeated in the East, but under breath, to the present day. We
have often heard them thus :

" What can man do, if the decrees of predestination surround him,
Binding him in his every state ? answer me, 0 learned professor.
He {i. e. as if He, that is God) cast him into the ocean, bound hand

and foot, and then said to him,
Woe to you, woe to you, should you get wet with the water."

He it is who thus in his verse addresses God :

" I love Thee with a twofold love, the love of friendship.
And the love grounded on this alone, that Thou art worthy of it.
But as to that my love which is the love of friendship,
It is a love which leaves me no thought for any save Thee ;
And as to the love of Thee according to Thy worthiness,
0 raise from betwixt us the veil, that I may behold Thee.
Nor is any praise due to me either for this or for that (love),
But to Thee alone the praise both for this and that."

572 Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations,

His life was in accordance with his sentiments, and never had
a master more entire command over the love and veneration
of his disciples.

But at last his prolonged absence from the customary Maho-
metan prayers, his neglect of the sacred pilgrimage, joined to a
strong suspicion that his covert doctrine was nothing else than
a form of Christianity, excited the suspicions of the more or-
thodox teachers of the town ; and perhaps their jealousy of his
superior popularity might coincide with their doctrinal zeal.
He was accused of affecting divine honours, and in spite of the
utter want of proof was condemned to death in the 309th year
of the Hejira. He was cruelly scourged, then his hands and
feet were cut off, and last his head. His body was burned, and
the ashes thrown into the Tigris. His last words were to
exhort the countless spectators of his torments not to permit
any unjust doubts of the Divine Providence to arise in their
minds at such a spectacle ; " for," said he, " God herein treats
me as a friend treats his friend, to whom he passes the cup of
which he has first drunk himself.^^ The Christian sense of
these words requires no comment. About the same time some
of his companions met a similar fate. Others fled; and the
mystic school of Bagdad was permanently transferred, at least
in great measure, to Egypt and the West.

It would be a long task to trace the lives and fortunes, to
record the sayings and acts, of those who followed in their path.
But before concluding this subject we must briefly mention
three widely-famed personages who flourished in the sixth and
seventh centuries of Islamism, and who gave their names to
the three principal brotherhoods into which the ascetics of
the countries where Arabic is spoken were henceforth divided.
Their work has remained to this day.

The first of these was Abd-el-Kadir el Ghilani. Born on
the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, he came when yet
young to Bagdad, where he often resided. Such was the
austerity of his life, such the wonders attributed to him, such
the sublimity of his doctrine, that he was looked on universally
as the Kothb of his day. This name requires some brief expla-
nation.

Long before this the mystics of the East had persuaded
themselves that there existed on the earth, among the initiated
(or illuminated, as they often called themselves), a secret
hierarchy, on which they all depended, and in whose obedience
and instructions they learned and followed the truth, unknown
to the uninitiated crowd around them. Of this hierarchy the
supreme dignity was supposed to be vested in the Khidr. This
was a man indeed, but one far elevated above ordinary human

Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations. 573

nature by his transcendent privileges. Admitted to the Divine
Vision, and possessed in consequence of a relative omnipotence
and omniscience on earth ; visible or invisible at pleasure ; freed
from the bonds of space and time ; by a sort of ubiquity and
immortality appearing in various forms on earth to uphold the
cause of truth ; then concealed awhile from men ; known in
various ages as Seth, as Enoch, as Elias, and yet to comei at
the end of time as the Mahdi el Montager (the expected guide);
— this wonderful being was the centre, the prop, the ruler, the
mediator of the ascetic band, and as such honoured with the
name of Kothb, or axis, as being the spiritual pole round which
and on which all moved or were upheld. Under him were the
Aulia, or intimate friends of God, seventy- two in number (though
some restrict them to narrower limits, twenty-four, for example),
holy men living on earth, who were admitted by the Kothb to
his intimate familiarity, and who were to the rest the sources of
all doctrine, authority, and sanctity. Among these again one,
preeminent above the rest, was qualified by the vicarious title of
Kothb-ez-zaman, or axis of his age, and was regarded as the
visible depositary of the knowledge and power of the supreme
Kothb — who was often named, for distinction-sake, Kothb el-
Akthab, or axis of the axes — and his constant representative
amongst men. But as this important election and consequent
delegation of powder was invisible and hidden from the greater
number even of the ascetics themselves, — and neither the Kothb-
ez-zaman nor the Aulia bore any outward or distinctive sign
of dignity and authority, — it could only be manifested by its
effects, and thus known by degrees to the outer world, and
even then rather as a conjecture than as a positive certainty.

But that Abd-el-Kadir el Ghilani was the Kothb of his
time no one doubted, and as such he announced himself un-
hesitatingly in his moments of religious excitement, though
at others he strove to conceal himself under the veil of a
mean and despicable appearance. However, in his quality of
Kothb he founded the brotherhood of the Kaderieh, or, as we
should say, the Order of Abd-el-Kadir, and gave them for
device or banner, to use their own term, poverty and abase-
ment. The association counted in its ranks some of the great-
est names of eastern honour in mystic and poetic literature,
— Mohi ed Din Ebn Aarabi in Syria, and Omar Ebn el Faridh
in Egypt. Both belonged to this brotherhood. Their doctrine
was that of Hosein el Halladj, whom Abd-el-Kadir taught
them to look on as their master, though it w^as often veiled
by them under a seemingly orthodox terminology ; and their
austerity and contempt of the world gave them a great influ-
ence over the mass of the people. They subsist to this day.

574 Asceticism amojigst Mahometan Nations,

A little later, but in the same century as Abd-el-Kadir, i.e, the
sixth, Ahmed Ebn Refalii, in the desert in the neighbourhood of
Basra, founded a second and yet stranger order of ascetics. Their
wandering habits and half-savage life distinguish them from
the calmer and more social Kaderieh; and it is from this brother-
hood that many of those half-juggler, half-enthusiast associa-
tions have sprung, of which travellers in the East have many
tales to relate. They are somewhat ill-looked on by the more
learned or more right-judging classes of men; yet their enthu-
siasm, as well as their extravagant feats, often procure them
the admiration of the populace. Ahmed el Refaai died near
Basra in the year 575 of the Hejirah.

Somewhat later still, — that is, towards the beginning of the
seventh century, — the Scheikh Ali Abou-1-Hasan Esh-Shadheli
appeared in Egypt and in the Yemen, and gave rise to the
confraternity of the Shadhelieh. Calm, modest, studious, and
fond of retirement, yet of great courtesy to those who visited
or consulted him, he instilled the same spirit into his numer-
ous disciples, and it still distinguishes his followers. A marked
propensity to associate with Christians, and an open approval
of many points in their religion, have in our own days drawn
on them the ill-will of the Turkish government. Their number
is very considerable ; and they show more vitality than either of
the two preceding brotherhoods.

These three associations are again subdivided into many and
distinct bands, each of which bears the name of its founder or
first director. Some, and especially the Refaaiyeh, distinguish
themselves by their very peculiar dress and high woollen cap ;
others, like the Shadhelieh, by the string of beads : all possess
the long robe, or khirkah, peculiar to the ascetic profession, and
mentioned at the beginning of this article; but they do not
always wear it in the crowd, especially the Kaderieh, who are
bound to avoid whatever might have an air of ostentation or
draw on them general notice.

As for the Persian Derviches, separated more and more by

Eolitical and religious division from their Western brethren, they
ave ended by having little in common with them; while the
pantheistic teaching so prevalent in the East is constantly dis-
avowed by the followers of Abd-el-Kadir, the Refaai, and the
Schadheli, though their disavowal has not always sufficed to
save the Kaderieh from all suspicion on this very head ; while
the Schadhelieh are in their turn accused of pan-religionism,
not entirely, it may be, without reason.

Yet, amid all the decline brought on the East by Ottoman
misrule, amid all the jarring and ungenial influences that have
ruined and laid bare those once populous and flourishing re-

Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations, 575

gions, amid bitter bigotry within and Western materialism
from without, and mere anarchy every where, they still subsist,
still maintain much of their old doctrines and their hereditary
practices. What revivals or decay they have gone through,
what more noted examples of austerity and virtue they have
afforded, how far prevailing modifications of creed and thought
among the masses have reacted on them also, to what degree
the Naksch-bundi association, that freemasonry of the East, has
found its way among them, — all this would form the subject of
an interesting enquiry which we have not space to pursue here.
For the same reason we must abstain from attempting a full
analysis of their doctrine, theoretical or practical, setting in full
light what is its connection with, what its opposition to, the
Islam of Mahomet. And we can only allude, in passing, to the
double symbolism whereby the highest and most spiritual mys-
teries of asceticism were often veiled under the semblance of
human personages and passions, or the dogmas and the teachers
most hostile to Mahometism made to assume the sound or ap-
pearance of orthodox nomenclature or characters. Thus Mecca
and Mahomet, the Prophet's sepulchre or the victory of Bedr,
are the apparent themes of eulogium or veneration ; but it is
another Mahomet than he of the Hedjaz, another Mecca, and
another Bedr. Thus they strove, not without frequent success,
to penetrate the enemy's camp in his own dress and likeness ;
and while regarded by all around them as friends, they dealt
deadly blows and did the work of destruction, themselves
secure : never less orthodox in Islam than when they appeared
most so. This subject alone would suffice for an ample treatise.
But any one who has paid attention to the facts we have already
described can form, if not a complete picture, at least a certain
outline of this view. We have not pointed out the resemblance
step by step, the counterpart, or the antithesis thus afforded to
the development of asceticism in Christian nations. Some such
parallelism, however, must naturally suggest itself to an atten-
tive reader; and we therefore laid down at the outset certain
principles which seemed proper to lessen unmeaning wonder, or
obviate unseasonable scandal. Fuller knowledge solves many
problems.

Another point of great interest which a fuller narrative and
deeper investigation might fairly bring to light we have here
advisedly passed over. But those, though they are few in
number, who can throw themselves into the feelings of other
nations than their own, may gather from what we have said
some conclusions both as to what arms Eastern Mahometanism
may justly fear, and under what form or by what line of con-
duct Christianity might find its way, and become once more

576 Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations,

dominant, in Arab lands. Perhaps we have sufficiently indi-
cated the only efficacious measures towards such an end, as well
as their cost. But modern Europe is little likely to give to the
East, even in such a cause, new Fodheils or Halladjs. At any
rate, it is easy to see how little adapted to success are the means
hitherto, generally at least, adopted ; and why European luxury
and commerce can make, indeed has already made, in the East,
a certain number of infidels, countless embittered enemies, but
no Christians,

[ 577 ]

THE COLONISATION OF NORTHU.AIBRIA.

The investigator of the early Teutonic colonisation of England
finds in diticrent parts of the enquiry counterbalancing aids
and privations. To the south of the island is mainly confined
that help to\yards elucidating its early history which is de-
rivable from the collection of grant-deeds and charters known
as the Codex Diplomaticus ^Evi Saxonici. The six northern
counties, on the other hand, or Northumbria, can point to
the illustrious Northumbrian writer of the eighth century, the
greatest literary light of the dark ages^ whose works supply far
more information bearing on their annals than on those of the
southern counties. It is to the colonisation of these northern
counties that we desire now to draw attention. They were
settled under circumstances in many respects exceptional, the
detailed examination of which promises to open an extremely
interesting and but partially explored field. Not that there is
any lack of works upon the early history and antiquities of
every one of these counties, taken separately. But in the
Saxon times Northumbria formed, ordinarily at least, one po-
litical whole, and its history ought therefore to be similarly
treated. To treat of the early state of the north of England
merely in its connection with the separate modern counties which
compose it, can only lead to a fragmentary and unsatisfying
knowledge. Again, in regular histories of England, it is sur-
prising how little pains have been expended — apparently from
the belief that the subject is too unimportant to require it —
upon the construction of a really critical account of the political
and social development of the different Anglo-Saxon kingdoms,
Northumbria included. Even Lingard slides without misgiving
over the most palpable difficulties, and often presents us with a
narrative which, under the mask of a rhetorical and apparent
coherency, conceals improbabilities of the gravest kind. Sir
Francis Palgrave leaves gaps both in his reasoning and his
narrative, and falls besides into downright blunders. Turner's
is still the most valuable history in our language for those
times ; but besides his inability to appreciate the religious ele-
ment in Saxon society, he falls into errors from the want of
adherence to those rigid critical principles by which the pre-
sent generation has learned both to discriminate between the
value of different documents, and to search out the criteria of
historic truth among collateral sources of information of aU

578 Colonisation of Northumhria.

kinds, many of which the historian of the old school never
dreamed of consulting.

The objects of the present paper are: 1. to describe the
Teutonic colonisation of Northumbria, showing the lines along
which it proceeded, and the checks and reverses which it sus-
tained, distinguishing between the Angle and Danish or Nor-
wegian operations ; and 2. to explain, as far as possible, the cir-
cumstances and conditions under which the six northern counties
were brought to their present forms and boundaries.

It is usual to commence the history of the Angle kingdoms
north of the H umber with Ida, who, according to the Saxon
Chronicle, began to reign in Northumbria in the year 547,
having his royal residence at Bamborough. Upon this view,
colonisation would have begun in Northumberland sooner than
in Yorkshire. This, however, seems improbable, for geographical
and other reasons. Such a tempting harbour as the mouth of
the Humber would not surely have been neglected by the Angle
adventurers, in favour of the exposed and dangerous coast of
Northumberland. But we are not without some positive evi-
dence. Nennius, or whoever was the author of the Historia
Britonum, says that Seomil, the sixth in descent from Woden,
''first separated^' (there is a various reading which has "con-
quered'^) '' Deur from Berneich,'' that is, Deira from Bernicia.^

* Upon the authorship of the Historia Britonum the reader may consult Mr.
Stevenson's edition of Nennius, and the remarks by Mr. Duffus Hardy in the
Introduction to the Monumenta Historica Britannica. The question is one of
the most difficult within the range of historical and bibliographical criticism.
Mr. Duffus Hardy comes to the conclusion that we must be content to consider
the Historia Britonum as an anonymous production. As to the two prologues,
he seems to regard the second, or shorter one, as an abbreviated and later ver-
sion of the first. The following view, which cannot here, however, be supported
by all the proofs and illustrations which are capable of being adduced, seems,
on the whole, to embrace the leading probabilities of the case.

1. The second prologue is not an abbreviation of the first ; on the contrary,
the first is a rhetorical amplification of the second. Let any one carefully com-
pare the two together, and judge for himself. Besides the internal evidence,
upon which we cannot stop to enlarge, the evidence derived from the Mss. is
important. The first prologue is only contained in a single Ms. of the twelfth
century, that in the Public Library at Cambridge, the comparatively late date
and unauthentic character of which Mr. Duffus Hardy admits ; while the second
is contained in this and at least three other Mss., though, it is true, in a dif-
ferent, if not later, handwriting. The twelfth century was a period in which
historians emulously affected the graces of style; among the English appeared
William of Malmesbury, and among the Britons, or Welsh, Geoffrey of Mon-
mouth and Caradoc of Llancarvan ; and it may be conjectiu-ed that the copyist
of the Cambridge Ms., finding a prologue written in a bald awkward style,
determined to reproduce it under a more ornate and flowing garb, and that to
this determination we owe the first prologue. Tlie mistake in the date which
the soi-disant author assigns to the composition of this prologue (Mcrvin being
named as reigning in Wales in 858 instead of Rodvi), inexplicable if we sup-
pose the prologue to be genuine, becomes easily intelligible if we consider it to
be a production of the twelfth century.

2. The Historia Britonum is certainly not the work of Gildas, to whom

The Colonisation of Northumbrian 579

Ida, wlio founded the northern kingdom in 547, Nennius makes
to have been the ninth in descent from Woden. It is clear,
therefore, that in his conception, or rather in that of the Saxon
annalist whom he is following, three generations intervened be-
tween Seomil and Ida, or, say, about ninety years. Florence of

Malmesbury and Huntingdon ascribe it. Gildas wrote in the middle of the
sixth century, when the devastations of the Saxons had not yet in the west
of Britain entirely destroyed the Roman culture, nor utterly disorganised the
system of education which had prevailed under the empire. Gildas writes like
a man whose mind was teeming with thoughts, and who had sufficient intel-
lectual resources to find for them copious and not ungraceful forms of expres-
sion. Nothing can less resemble the energetic flow of his style than the
awkward, hesitating, struggling progress made by the author of the Historia
Britonum.

3. There seems no good reason to doubt that Nennius, the writer of the
second or original prologue, also wrote the Historia Britonum^ excluding § 66
(we refer to the edition in the Monumenta Historica), but including the genea-
logies of the Saxon kings. The style of the second prologue perfectly agrees
with that of the history. The genealogies (which contain many historical par-
ticulars), though introduced without preface, and not interwoven in any way
with the thread of the preceding narrative, do yet in fact fulfil the promise
given in the prologue of making use of the ^nnaZ* of the Saxons, in order to
augment his stock of information. Section 66 occurs only in the Cambridge
Ms., and in others copied from that. It appears to have been inserted by the
twelfth-century copyist as an abbreviated substitute for the genealogies, which
he omits. He says : " Sed cum inutiles, magistro meo, id est, Beulano presby-
tero, visse sunt gcnealogise Saxonum et aliarum gentium, nolui eas scribere."
The great antiquity of these genealogies is proved by their occurrence in the
valuable Harleian Ms. of the tenth century (3859), which, though it inserts
neither prologues nor headings nor author's name, gives the Historia down to
the end of § 65 nearly as the Cambridge Ms., and immediately, without any
break, appends the genealogies.

4. Assuming the second prologue to be genuine, Nennius, the author of this
history, was a disciple of St. Elbotus. Now we know from the Annales Cam-
bricE that St. Elbotus died in 809. Probably, therefore, the Historia was
composed somewhere within the first forty years of the ninth century. AVe are
disposed to assign its composition to the first decade of the century rather than
to any later decade for this reason : the latest date traceable in the genealogies
is found in the pedigree of the kings of Mercia, where " Egfert son of Otfa"
is mentioned. This Egfert died in 794, and was succeeded by Kenwulf, who
died in 819. Surely, then, the name of Kenwulf would have been added in
the genealogy if it had been written subsequently to his death.

5. What is the historical value of the genealogies? We are disposed to rate
it very highly. They are contained, as has been stated, in a Ms. of the tenth
century. Assuming them in their present form to have come from Nennius,
they were written down early in the ninth century, that is, before the earliest
known "redaction" of the Saxon Chronicle was prepared, under the superin-
tendence of Archbishop Plegmund. But whether ascribable to Nennius or not,
the internal evidence is in favour of their authenticity. For when we come to
the mention of such a fact as this, that Edwin, king of Northumbria (617-633)
'•seized on Elmete," a district in the West Riding, "and expelled Certic its
king," — a fact mentioned neither byBede, nor by the Saxon Chronicle, nor any
other annalist, but curiously confirmed, as will be shown in the text presently,
by an incidental statement of Bede, — what conclusion is it possible to come to
but that the British writer is here quoting the very words used by the Saxon,
probably Northumbrian, annalist, whom he is consulting ? For what would a
Briton be likely to know about the obscure district of Elmete, the very name of
"which is not once mentioned in the Saxon Chronicle, and only once by Bede,
and then in a wholly different connection t

VOL. IV. q q

580 The Colonisation of Northumhriai

Worcester also makes Seomil anterior to Ida, — by five genera-
tions according to the pedigree of Ida given in his appendix, by-
one according to that given in the chronicle. Selecting the
account given in Nennins as more historically trustworthy than
any other,- we assume that Seomil, an Angle chieftain who lived
about the year 460, did really " separate Deira from Bernicia /'
by which we understand that, establishing an Angle kingdom
to the north of the Humber, and thus destroying the British
power in Deira, he effectually separated that province from the
still British kingdom of Bernicia.

It is difficult to say what a strange statement is worth, made
by the second continuator of Florence of Worcester, a writer of
the thirteenth century, to the effect that seven lineal ancestors
of Ida reigned in Northumbria before him, of whom Hyring was
the first.^ Allowing twenty years for each reign, this would
throw back the commencement of the Angle colonisation to the
early part of the fifth century. But as these predecessors of
Ida were unknown to the earlier authorities, it is impossible
to attach much weight to the statement.

Nor can we agree with Lappenberg in adopting the state-
ment of Ncnnius,* which is further amplified and developed in
the lying pages of Geoffrey of Monmouth, that Hengist obtained
from Vortigern, for his sons Octa and Ebusa, the countries in
the north near the wall of Severus. The account of the pro-
ceedings of Hengist and his followers given in the Saxon Chro-
nicle conveys an impression quite at variance with a belief in
such a rapid spread of Saxon dominion, at least from a Kentish
centre. Seven or eight years after the landing of the invaders
in the Isle of Thanet the Britons still held London ;^ and there
is not a trace of evidence in the early writers that the Saxons
of Kent penetrated far to the north of the Thames. Nennius
in this passage is clearly relying on the British, not on the
Saxon annals. And we cannot be too much on our guard
against the mendacious Celtic imagination, the inventions of
which are usually neither vera nor veri-similia. Wounded na-
tional vanity and intense hatred of the Saxon (for which, it must
be confessed, there was cause enough) induced the British his-
torians, from Gildas down to Geoffrey, to ascribe the loss of
Britain to two causes — the anger of Heaven against the Britons
on account of their sins, and the inexhaustible multitude of bar-
barians whom teeming Germany poured, in successive waves of
invasion, upon their devoted coasts. It was not that the Saxons
were more formidable in war ; on the contrary, whenever there

3 For the reasons given in the foregoing note.
» Florence, p. 385 (Bohn's ed.).

4 Hist, Britonum, k 38. * Sax. Chron. an. 457.

The Colonisation of Northumbria. 581

was any thing like an equality of force, the Britons scattered
their "doggish"^ foes like chaff. It was that British princes
were traitors ; that the supernal powers were wrath ; that as
fast as one swarm of invaders was destroyed, another landed.
All these being first principles with Celtic historians, history
of course must be shaped into accordance with them J Hence
arose those wild fictions of which the Hlstoria Byntonum is the
earliest extant embodiment, but which, being carried across the
Channel to Brittany, were improved by the sea-passage, and hav-
ing been worked up into a still more racy History of the Kings
of Britain, recrossed the sea in the twelfth century, and were
presented to the world as serious history in the Latin transla-
tion of Geoffrey of Monmouth.^ How unlike the sturdy veracity
of the Saxon chronicler, who, though with pain unutterable,
fails not to record, each in its proper place, the many bloody
overthrows which his countrymen suffered from the Danes !

But the argument derived from geographical considerations
and the names of places has, upon the whole, the greatest force
in proof of the very early colonisation of the East Riding. The
strip of coast extending from Spurn Point to Flamborough Head,
bounded by the sea on the east, and the Holdernesse fen occu-
pying the valley of the river Hull on the west, is crowded Avith
villages, the names of the great majority of which are pure
Anglo-Saxon. Not one in fifteen is Danish. This fact may be
taken as indicating that this part of the East Riding was so fully
peopled when the Danes began to make settlements on our east-
ern coasts, that they were unable to alter the existing names,
and found no room to make fresli settlements of their own.
That they did alter existing names when they could, is shown in
the instances of Derby and Whitby, of which the old Saxon
names were Nor^-weor^ig and Streoneshalch. In Lincolnshire,
on the other hand, which, as forming part of Mercia, had been
colonised from Northumbria, and at a later period, the Saxon
settlements must have been comparatively sparse and few even
in the ninth century ; for we find that place-names of Danish
origin form about two-fifths of the whole number in North Lin-
colnshire. Now relative density of population is, under ordi-
nary circumstances, a proof of relatively earlier colonisation.
The same people that colonised ^lassachusetts colonised the
state of Ohio ; but Massachusetts, though its soil is of far in-

s Gildas, § 23.

' Gildas, however, deserves to be almost wholly exempted from this censure.

^ This seems a reasonable account of the matter, the resemblance between
the narrative of Nennius and that of Geoifrey being far too close in many places
to be the result of accident, and the amplification and embellishment of the
work of Xennius with picturesque falsehood to any amount being certain to be
a congenial task and labour of love to the Armorican historians.

582 T'he Colonisation of Nortliumhria*

ferior fertility, is much more densely peopled. What is the
reason ? Simply that the colonisation of Massachusetts com-
menced more than a century and a half before the colonisation
of Ohio. The distribution of the Maori population in New
Zealand, at the time when it became a British possession, is also
a case in point. The unvarying native tradition declares that
the ancestors of the present Maories came from the eastward,
and made their first settlement at the northern extremity of the
northern island. The tradition is confirmed by the fact that, at
the date mentioned, the native population of New Zealand,
densest in the extreme north, diminished almost regularly in
density as you went southward; so that the southern island,
though its numerous bays swarmed with fish, and its rocky
shores with mussels, and its hill-sides waved with the edible fern,
contained no more than a seventieth part of the whole native po-
pulation. Similarly, the relatively greater density of the Angle
population of the Holdernesse district in the ninth century, proved
by the close juxtaposition of the villages, and by the persistence
of their old Angle names, is itself a proof that colonisation had
commenced in that district at a relatively remote period.

We have, then, two distinct centres of Angle settlement in
Britain north of the Humber ; that of Bernicia, radiating from
Bebbanburg, or Bamborough, the strong fortress and city on a
rock, built by Ida about the middle of the sixth century, and
that of Deira, radiating from some unknown point in the East
E/iding, the position of which can never be ascertained with
certainty. In the time of Seomil it may possibly have been at
the Roman station of Petuaria, afterwards Brough, on the Hum-
ber, whence a Roman road led to York. In the time of ^lle
or Ella (who reigned from 560 to 588), there seems some slight
ground for fixing the capital of Deira a little farther inland,
where the villages of Kirk Ella and West Ella, which are situ-
ated high up on the chalk downs, still perpetuate the name of
that king. The examples of Edinburgh (Edwinesburg) and Os-
winthorpe, both royal fortresses, the latter a royal residence,
show that the kings of Deira were in the habit of calling their
strongholds or residences by their own names. As the Angle
settlers spread themselves northwards from the Humber, the
residence of their kings would also naturally be moved forward
from time to time in the same direction. That it was on the
Derwent,9 a few miles to the east of York, in the reign of Edwin
(617-633), we know for certain from the narrative of Bede.^°
That it had previously been at Godmundingham, or Goodman-
ham, just at the western edge of the Wolds, may be inferred

^ Without doubt at the Roman city of Derventio, near Stamford Bridge,
w Hist Eccl, ii. 9.

The Colonisation of Northumhria,

i33

with some plausibility from the fact recorded by Bede/^ that the
principal temple of the old worship, previous to the conversion
of King Edwin by Paulinus, stood at that place. The diagram
subjoined will make more clear the presumed gradual extension
northwards of the Deiran dominion.

Ticroi^Tu

Prom the first landing of the Angles to the final union of
Deira and Bernicia under King Oswald, in 642, we shall, so far
as possible, treat of the two kingdoms separately. The boundary
between them is a disputed point ; some of the chroniclers place
it at the Tees, and others at the Tyne. A river, the reader must
observe, is not a natural, but a conventional boundary between
two tribes or peoples. We hear of no wars of any consequence
between Deira and Bernicia, and therefore have no right to
assume that the boundaries which nature established between
them were disused, in favour of those conventional frontiers
which a spirit of compromise suggests. Deira, which undoubt-
edly extended to the Tees, would as undoubtedly, in the early
times which we are now exploring, include the fertile lands and
coteaux on the north bank of that river ; it would embrace the
whole of the beautiful Yale of Cleveland. Similarly Bernicia,
which certainly extended to the Tyne, would as certainly include
the whole Tyne valley, and also the rich level district near the
sea, between the mouths of the Tyne and Wear^ which are but
seven miles apart. The reader will remember that the twin
monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, names which, from their

" Hist. Eccl. ii. 13.

■

584 The Colonisation of Northumbrian

connection Vitli the life of the Venerable Bede, will never be for-
gotten while literature endures, stood, one upon the Tyne, the
other at the mouth of the Wear. Bernician settlers would also,
one can hardly doubt, occupy the lower valley of the Wear. The
rest of the county of Durham would be mark-land between the
two kingdoms. To the west the county is mountainous ; in
the eastern portion, where the coal-measures rise to the surface,
the land is by no means inviting for agricultural settlement, and
would consequently long remain in the state of a thinly peopled
march, mostly covered by the original forest. In this way is to
be explained the exaggerated statement of John of Tynemouth,

that in the British times the whole of Durham was one vast
forest. 12

In Nennius, Florence, and the Saxon Chronicle, lists^^ of
kings are given who reigned in Deira before -^Ue, but we are
told nothing more about them. JElle died in 588, leaving a son,
Edwin, then two years old ; a regency in some form or other
was probably established, which was put down by Ethelfrid
about the year 605. Ethelfrid (the ^Edlfred Flesaurs of Nen-
nius), whom we know from Bede^* to have been of a Bernician
family, and descended from Ida, after having reigned in Bernicia
twelve years, is said by Nennius^^ to have reigned twelve years
in Deira. This must mean that he overran the Angle settlements
in Deira in 605, and had his royal residence for the rest of his
reign at Derventio, which we find to have been the capital twenty
years later. In 607, according to the Saxon Chronicle, he " led
his army to Chester, and there slew numberless Welshmen.^^
Bede also says^^ that he ^^ conquered more territories from the
Britons, either making them tributary, or driving the inhabitants

^2 Until the reign of Henry VIII., Erecknockshire and Radnorshire were
not considered as counties, but as forming part of the marches of Wales. In
that reign they were formed into counties ; and it is noticeable that they, like
Durham, are stream-bounded to an extent much beyond -what is usual in Eng-
lish counties, and for the same reason, viz. that their boundaries were not
determined by the gradual course of natural colonisation, but fixed by states-
men in the way most expeditious and convenient.

^3 These genealogies require more examination than they have received. It
is singular that in the list given in the Saxon Chronicle, the names of Seomil,
the original conqueror of Deira, and Swserta, are omitted, while they are found
in both of Florence's lists (under the year 557 and in the Appendix), who
usually closely follows the Saxon Chronicle for this early period. Yet Florence
is not here following Nennius, whose list, though it contains Seomil, omits
Swserta, and has other points of divergence. May not Swajrta be merely an-
other name for Seomil, an agnomen, or name of distinction, given to him on
account of his feats of arms ; just as a hero of our own times, who had not
then performed any feats of arms, was dubbed, or dubbed himself, Meagher of
the Sword. What seems to confirm this conjecture is, that Nennius names
Sguerthing as the son and successor of Seomil. Now Sguerthing evidently
stands for Swaerting (the g in Welsh constantly replacing the English w), and
simply means "son of Swajrta."

'4 Hist, EccU iii. 1. "§ 63. ^^ i. 35.

The Colonisation of Nortlmmhria, 585

clean out, and planting Angles in their places, tlian any other
king or tribune/^ Taking these statements in connection with
each other, and with the further statement of Bede that the next
king, Edwin, fitted out fleets which subdued Anglesey and Man,
one may safely infer that the Northumbrian kingdom at this
time stretched across South Lancashire, and included a part of
Cheshire. The port where Edwin fitted out his fleet could have
been no other than Chester; for the site of Liverpool was then a
dismal swamp, and Chester had been much used as a naval sta-
tion by the Romans, and was still so used in the tenth century
by Edgar. But this westward extension was a rash and undue
one, which could only be maintained against the hostile British
population west of the Dee by very energetic rulers, being much
in advance of the progress of Angle colonisation. We find,
therefore, without surprise, that after the death of Edwin, Ches-
ter again fell into the hands of the Britons, and so continued
until, in the eighth century, the Mercian kings became strong
enough to wrest it from them.

Edwin, son of iElle, returned from exile in 617 at the head
of an army supplied to him by E-edwald, king of East Anglia,
and in the battle which ensued Ethelfrid was defeated and slain.
Edwin and his people were converted to Christianity in 627 by
the preaching of Paulinus ; the touching and picturesque parti-
culars, so strangely distorted by most of our modern historians,
may be read in Bede. One incident we cannot refrain from
quoting, on account of the light which it casts on the habits of
life of the Angle race ; it occurred at the great council of priests
and thanes which Edwin held, in order to debate the question
whether the new religion should be embraced. ''Another of
the king^s chief men, approving of his words and exhortations,
presently added, ' The present life of man, O king, seems to me,
in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the
swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at
supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a
good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail
abroad ; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immedi-
ately out at another, whilst he is within is safe from the wintry
storm; but after a short space of fair weather he immediately
vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he
had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space ;
but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly
ignorant. If, therefore, this doctrine contains something more
certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.^ ''^"^

Paulinus fixed his see at York, probably in deference to the
wish expressed by Pope Gregory^^ that London and York, which
17 Hist. Eccl. ii. 13. 18 lb. i. 29.

586 The Colonisation of Northumhria,

had been the chief sees in Roman Britain, should continue, under
the new arrangements, to enjoy metropolitan dignity. But York
probably lay in ruins at this time, and was in the condition of
many other cities once flourishing and adorned with noble build-
ings, the prostrate state of which in the sixth century Gildas so
pathetically describes ;^^ else why should it have been necessary
for Edwin to build the wooden church at York in which he
was baptised ? for, under the Romans, Eboracum, as the seat of
government, and the chief city in Britain, must have contained
many churches of stone. When, however, it had thus been made
the religious centre of the Northumbrian kingdom, York soon be-
came also the political centre, and we hear of Derventio no more.
Edwin, though he reigned but sixteen years, left his mark
upon our land and its history by seizing and fortifying the rock
looking over and commanding the Frith of Forth, which after
him was named Edwinesburg, or Edinburgh ; and also by con-
quering the island of Mona, which thenceforth bore the name — at
least for Englishmen — of Angles-ey, island of the Angles. It
was probably early in this reign that he " seized Elmete, and
expelled Gertie its king/'^^ Elmete is supposed by Whitaker to
have embraced the lower portions of Airedale and Wharfedale,
together with the entire vale of Calder/^^ Gertie, or Geretic, is a
British name, and if it be taken as the true name, Elmete must
have been one of the British petty kingdoms which Ethelfrid
forced to pay him tribute. But " Elmete" has a Saxon rather
than a British sound ; and if Gertie be supposed to have been
written in error for Gerdic (the reading of some of the later
Mss.), then we have an instance of an Angle petty kingdom
absorbed by the paramount Angle dynasty. Either supposition
will suit the words of Bede, that Edwin "reduced under his
dominion all the borders of Britain that were provinces either of
the aforesaid nation^' {i. e. of the Northumbrian Angles) " or of
the Britons."-^ What a glimpse does this chance mention of the
conquest of Elmete give one of an old state of society well nigh
lost to history, when Yorkshire was cut up into four or five little
kingdoms, struggling for the mastery with each other and with
rude nature, the final predominance of one of which caused the
fortunes, and almost the names, of the others to be forgotten I
Besides Elmete, one may feel certain that Loidis, Gleveland,^
and Graven, had at one time a more or less independent political
existence.^*

J» § 24. 20 Nennius, § 63.

2» Whitaker's (T. D.) Loidis and Elmete (folio) ; see also the diagram given
above. 22 jj, 9^

23 May not Cleveland be meant by the district of Coetlevum, mentioned by
Eddi Stephanus in his Life of St. Wilfrid, eh. xvii. ?

^ See the diagram.

The Colonisation of NortJmmhria, 587

In 633 Edwin was defeated by the allied forces of Penda, the
Mercian king, and Cadwalla, king of the Britons, and lost his
life in the battle. In the confusion which followed^ Deira and
Bernicia were again divided; the former falling to Edwin^s
nephew Osric, the latter to Eanfrid, the son of his predecessor
Ethelfrid. But before two years had been ended, both these
kings had been slain by Cadwalla ; and Oswald, Eanfrid's brother,
returning from Scotland, where, during Edwin's reign, he had
been forced to live in exile, made his authority recognised in both
kingdoms, Cadwalla having been defeated and slain at the battle
of Denisesburn. '^ Through this king's management,^' says Bede,
" the provinces of the Deiri and the Bernicians — which till then
had been at variance — were peacefully united, and moulded into
one people/'"^ Nor, although in the reign of Oswy (642-670),
Oswin the son of Osric, and after him Ethelwald the son of Os-
wald, had a sort of subordinate regal dignity in Deira, were the
two countries ever again thoroughly dissevered before the sup-
pression of the Northumbrian kingdom.

What we know of Bernicia between the years 547 and 642 may
be summed up in very few words. Ida was succeeded by several
of his sons, and then by his grandson Ethelfrid in 593, of whom
we have already spoken. Paulinus preached to and converted
great numbers of the Bernicians at a place called Gefrin ( Yever-
ing), near the river Till, in the northern part of Northumber-
land ;-^ but being driven out of Northumbria after the death of
Edwin, he was unable to take the necessary steps to confirm
these converts in the faith; and the effect was so evanescent
that, upon the accession of Oswald, Bede expressly states that
"no sign of the Christian faith — no church, no altar — was
erected throughout all the nation of the Bernicians.'^-'' How the
brave and holy king brought Aidan, one of the monks of Hii
(lona) from Scotland, and by his means effectually planted
Christianity in the country north of the Tees, may be read in
Bede. Aidan fixed his see at Lindisfarne, or Holy Isle ; an island
lying off the coast of Northumberland, not far from Berwick,
This was a central position as regarded Bernicia, which then
extended to the Frith of Forth ; and neither Aidan nor Oswald
could have anticipated that the see of York, left vacant by the
retirement of Paulinus, would not be filled up for more than
thirty years. But so it was ; and in consequence the Bishops of
Lindisfarne were called upon to act during that interval for
the whole of Northumbria ; whence Colman, the third of those
Bishops, is named by Eddi Stephanus " episcopus Eboracse civi-
tatis.''

From the point at which we have now arrived, it will be more

^ iii. 6. 26 Bede, ii. 14. ^ lb. iii. 2.

588 The Colonisation of NorOmmhria,

convenient to make such observations as may be necessary upon
the subsequent history of Northumbria in connection with the
following special heads of enquiry; viz. 1. the limits and \icissi-
tudes of Angle dominion in what is now Scotland; 2. the struggle
between the Britons and Angles in Cumberland and "Westmore-
land, and the Norwegian colonisation of those counties ; 3. the
mode in which Lancashire was settled ; 4. the rise, growth, and
limits of the jurisdiction known as the Franchise of St. Cuthbert.
That it will be impossible to treat these matters exhaustively is
obvious ; nevertheless, so little has this particular field been tra-
versed by our historians and archaeologists, that it wdll be easy
to say several things that are both new and true under each of
these heads, except perhaps the last.

1. The ordinary impression of most persons, even of those
who suppose themselves tolerably well acquainted with our
national history, is that in the match of Teuton against Celt
the victory lay wholly with the former, — that the Saxon was
always on the encroaching and aggressive side, and was never
compelled to relinquish what he had once grasped, much less to
submit to the rule of Celts. Yet, if the early history of Scotland
could be exhibited with any thing like fulness and distinctness
of detail, we should all be struck by the marked manner in which
this impression, so far as regards North Britain, is contradicted
by the facts. In the first place, the very name of the country
points to the predominance in it of the Celtic race. If the name
"Enofland^^ (Angle-land) betokens the discomfiture of the Celtic
inhabitants of Southern Britain before Teutonic invaders coming
from the east and north, the name of Scot-land no less clearly
intimates the ultimate political ascendancy in Northern Britain
of Celtic invaders coming from the south and west — an ascend-
ancy obtained in spite of the most strenuous efforts of the Angles
to extend and consolidate their conquests beyond the Tweed.
What these efforts were, and how they were frustrated, we shall
now endeavour to show.

At what time Angle settlers first began to colonise the
eastern shores of Scotland it is now impossible to ascertain.
But that as early as the time of Ida (547) a considerable mass
of Angle population must have been settled north of the Tweed,
may be reasonably inferred from his choosing a place so far
north as Bamborough for the seat of his government. The
eastern counties of the Lowlands were at this time occupied by
Picts, whom the new-comers either dispossessed or made tribu-
taries. Dumfriesshire, or at any rate the basin of the Nith,^
was also Pictish. Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, and Dumbarton-
shire as far as Alcluid (afterwards Dumbarton), — in other words,
» Bede, Vita -S. Cuth. ch. xi.

llie Colonisation of Northumhria. 589

almost the entire basin of the Clyde, — formed the kingdom of
the Strath-clyde Britons. These Britons probably established
themselves here at the time when the Roman dominion was un-
questioned as far as the wall of Antoninus ; and protected by
their natural boundaries of rugged mountain-ranges, and by the
obstacle which their fortress of Alcluid, placed behind a deep
river flowing out of Loch Lomond, presented to an invader from
the north-west, they were able to hold their ground when that
dominion was forced backward, and the stream of Scoto-Pictish
invasion, leaving the little kingdom safe in its midst, overflowed
the more assailable regions of Southern Britain. The south-
western district — Ayrshire and Galloway — is said to have been
inhabited by a mixed population of Scots and Picts.29 The
Scots, whose seat was Argyleshire and the coasts and islands
farther north, came unquestionably froi^i Ireland. They are
said by the Scottish annalists to have sailed from Dalreutha
in Ulster, and landed on the western shore of Scotland in
503, under the leadership of Fergus.''^ The residence of their
kings for many generations was Dunstafthage Castle, near
Oban.

We hear of no efibrts on the part of the Scots to rescue the
Picts from the extermination with which they were threatened
by the Angle race. But when the Britons, who then perhaps
occupied not only Cumberland and Westmoreland, but also the
western part of Northumberland, were hard pressed by Ethel-
frid, and great numbers of them dislodged or made tributaries,
J^dan, who then reigned over the Scots inhabiting Britain,
made a vigorous but unsuccessful diversion in their favour.
Whether he brought his army by sea, or through Ayrshire, or
■was allowed by the Strath-clyde Britons to pass through their
territory, we are not told. But thus much may be held as cer-
tain, that he entered Cumberland in 603, met the Angle army
at Dalston,^^ near Carlisle, and, after a bloody contest, was com-
pletely defeated. From this time down to his own day, no
Scottish king, says Bede, had ventured to lead an army against
the Angles.

Gradually the Picts were driven westward and northw^ard by
the stronger race. There seems no reason to doubt the correct-
ness of the tradition which assigns the foundation of Edinburgh
to Edwin, between the years 617 and 633. Before 650 the Angles

^ Scott's Hist, of Scotland, ch. i. so ib.

3' Degsa-stan, Bede, i. 34, and Florence sub anno ; Doegsan-stane, Sax. Chron.
It has been conjectured thatDawston, near Jedburgh, is intended. Had ^dan
been bringing aid to the Picts, this might have been so ; but an ally of the Bri-
tons could do them no good by entering Pictish territory, which the vale of
Teviot then was. Yet it is hard to see how Degsa-stan could be corrupted into
Dalston.

590 The Colonisation of Northumhria,

had pushed up the valley of the Tweed as far as Melrose ; and
thenceforward a line of English abbots governed the famous
monastery which had been founded there by Scottish monks from
lona.^- After Oswy's victory over Penda king of Mercia in G55,
Bede informs us that he brought under his dominion the greater
part of the Pictish nation. Whether or not he pushed his con-
quests beyond the Frith of Porth, we cannot certainly tell ; but
it seems probable that he did.

It was under Egfrid (670-685) that the Angle kingdom pene-
trated farthest into Scotland, at least on the eastern side. So
firmly did it seem to be established to the south of the Frith
of Forth, that in 681 Trumwine was appointed by Archbishop
Theodore to be Bishop "in the province of the Picts," and fixed
his see at the monastery of Abercorn, a few miles to the west of
Edinburgh.^^ Egfrid led an army into Forfarshire in 685 against
Burdei, king of the Picts, with the intention apparently of es-
tablishing Angle supremacy along the whole eastern coast ; but
fortune failed him, and with a sudden collapse the Angle king-
dom shrank back within limits which it was never afterwards to
exceed. The Picts slew Egfrid, and nearly destroyed his army
among the hills of Forfarshire. The victors pressed on in pur-
suit into the Lothians, and all the Angle colonists who could
not take refuge in fortresses had to flee for their lives. Bishop
Trumwine and his monks were included in the herd of fugitives ;
and the former, sickened, it would seem, of missions among the
Picts, retired to Abbess Hilda^s monastery at Streoneshalch. It
may be conjectured that the castled rock of Edinburgh, and per-
haps one or two other strong places, remained to the Angles as
isolated points in the midst of a country generally lost to them.
Nor were they dislodged from the valley of the Tweed ; for the
succession of Angle abbots at Melrose continues unbroken, and
King Aldfrid, Egfrid's successor, used, as Bede incidentally men-
tions,^* to pay occasional visits to those parts, which are mani-
festly spoken of as still forming part of his dominions. Yet the
same unimpeachable witness expressly declares that Aldfrid,
though he retrieved matters a good deal, had his kingdom

32 Eata, an Angle, was, according to Florence, abbot of Melrose in 651.
He was a boy (Bede, iii. 26) when Aldan first became Bishop of Lindisfarne in
635. His appointment to Melrose, therefore, could not have occurred much,
if at all, before 650, in which year he would not have been more than thirty,
even if we suppose him to have been fifteen years of age in 635. Now Eata
must have been the first Angle abbot of Melrose, because before 635 the whole
Bemician nation was Pagan. Before him, the abbots were Scottish, and would
certainly so have continued, had not Melrose fallen, somewhere about the date
supposed, into the hands of the Angles, when the change of temporal rulers
brought with it, as almost invariably happened in those days, a change in the
spiritual rulers.

» Hist. Eccl. iv. 12. ** lb. v. 12.

The Colonisation of Northumhria. 591

'^ within narrower bounds" than his predecessor. Probably the
Picts were stopped at the pass of Cockburnspath, in Berwick-
shire— a position which might easily be held by a few resolute
men against a greatly superior force.

But Bede, with his calm steady procedure, his English vera-
city, his saintly simplicity, his openness of mind and fulness of
Ivuowledge, fails us, alas, too soon, and an impenetrable darkness
falls over the state of society in the eastern Lowlands for about
a century and a half. AVith regard to Ayrshire and the north
coast of the Solway, we retain some glimmerings of light down
to a later time. Between the battle of Degsa-stan and the defeat
of Egfrid (603-685) Lugubalia, or Carlisle, must have become a
completely Angle city; and we cannot doubt that it served as the
chief port and depot for the Northumbrian kings in their opera-
tions in the Solway or against Ireland. Hence, or perhaps from
the mouth of the Derwent, must have sailed the fleet w^hich
Egfrid sent on an unjust raid against Ireland in 684 Hence
also must have radiated those colonising operations which
planted Angle settlements thickly on the whole Scottish coast,
from the head of the Solway round to the Erith of Clyde. The
mere fact that these settlements (as the present nomenclature of
places proves^^) did not extend in general very far from the coast,
shows that the settlers came either by sea or round the head of
the Erith. The rugged mountains which form the watershed
between the basin of the Tweed and Teviot and tlie country
sloping to the Solway, must have presented great difficulties in
the way of the westward progress of Angle colonisation overland;
but by the occupation of Carlisle, and its employment as a port,
these difficulties were overcome, or rather turned. Rapidly must
this new field have been taken up. Already, in 696, Cuning-
ham, the northern district of Ayrshire, was reckoned a province
of Northumbria.^'' In 750 the plain of Kyle, the central dis-
trict of Ayrshire, was added by Eadbert, the then king of Nor-
thumhria, to his dominions.37 The increasing numbers of the
colonists had led, about the year 727, to the erection of a
bishopric in Galloway, at Whitherne or Candida Casa, where
St. Ninias had formerly preached to the Picts, of which Pech-
thelm was the first Bishop.^^ In 756 Eadbert, probably on ac-

35 e. g. Rothwell and Dalton, in Dumfriesshire ; Soutliwiek, Berwick, and
Tvviueham, in Kirkcudbrightshire ; Whitherne, Wigton, and Glasserton, in
AVigtonshire ; and Prestwick, Monkton, Fenvvick, &c., in Ayrshire. From,
these Angle names it is easy to distinguish the later Scandinavian names
of places, ending in by, garth, &c,, which resulted from Danish or Norwegian
occupation ; and also the Celtic names, with their characteristic prefixes, Dal,
Auchin, Knock, Bal, Glen, Ben, Caer, &c.

3« Bede, v. 12.

37 Auctarium, Bede. 35 -Qq^q y. 23,

592 The Colonisation of Northumhria,

count of annoyances whicli the settlers in Cuningham or Een-
frewshire had received from tlie Strath-clyde Britons, led an
army, in which Unust, king of the Picts, was present as his ally,
against Alcluid. The Britons, we are told, came to terms with
him.39

We have now reached the climax of Northumbrian power.
Disaster soon after fell on the western, no less than on the east-
ern settlements. Ethelwald Moll, then king of Northumbria,
did indeed gain a great victory near Melrose in 761;*° but the
failure of the line of Angle Bishops at Whitherne, towards the
beginning of the ninth century, "^^ is a certain proof that the Scots
about that time made themselves masters of Galloway. The re-
covery of Carlisle by the Britons was probably connected in some
way with that disaster.

In 839 the famous Scottish king, Kenneth II., drove the
Angles out of Melrose, and destroyed the monastery which had
educated St. Cuthbert. In 842 the same monarch defeated and
slew in Perthshire Wrad, the last king of the Picts, who thence-
forward are identified in history with the Scots. The power of
the Northumbrians, whose proneness to treason, perjury, mur-
der, and rebellion during the last fifty years of their national
existence called forth the anger and contempt of Charlemagne^'*'
constantly decreased, and the Scottish monarchy became more
consolidated. Our annalists are careful indeed to record that
the great English kings of the tenth century, Athelstan, Edred,
and Edgar, exercised a paramount and admitted sovereignty
over the kings of Scotland ; but, if the fact be true, it is of little
consequence. The surrender of Cumberland by Edmund in 945,
after he had conquered it, to Malcolm, the Scottish king, is a
much more significant circumstance; for it shows Scotland en-
croaching upon Northumbria, instead of Northumbrians making
conquests in Scotland. At what time the Lothians and Ber--
wickshire were lost, we can nowhere find recorded. Scottish
history informs us that " Eadulf Cudel, earl of Northum-
berland, in 1020 ceded to the Scottish king [Malcolm II.]
the rich district of Lothene or Lothian,^^-*^ with other terri-
tories; but no contemporary writer states this; and the Earl
of Northumbria in 1020 was not Eadulf Cudel, but Eric.
However, it appears from the Saxon Chronicle, that in 1091
the Lothians, though still considered as in " Engla-land'' (for
the Frith of Forth was considered even in the thirteenth cen-

39 Sim. Dun. de Gestis Reg. Angl. ^ lb.

••' See the list given in the Appendix to Florence. Beadulph, the last Bishop
but one, was living in 796. Of the last of all, Heathored, we can discover abso-
lutely nothing.

« Will. Malrasb. i. 3. « Scott's Hist of Scotland, ch. ii.

The Colonisation of Northumhria, 593

tuiy as tlie boundary between the Scots and the Angles),"**
yet formed part of the Scottish king's dominions ; and it seems
probable that the whole eastern Lowlands, except perhaps a
few isolated strongholds, had been lost to Northumbria in the
ninth century, although the Angle inhabitants had not been
dispossessed.

2. Little can be securely ascertained respecting the early
state of Cumberland. The name, which points to the Cymry,
the same root which is found in the word Cambria, together with
geographical considerations, would be sufficient to prove, with-
out any other testimony, that the British inhabitants of the
north of England, driven across the high dividing range which
parts the valleys trending east and west by the Angle invaders,
long held their ground in the valleys of the Eden and Derwent,
and among the mountains of the Lake district. But the Angles
followed them up ; and, after fully settling the valley of the south
Tyne, would naturally be induced, following w^here the Eoman
wall, scaling the dividing range, seemed to invite them onwards,
to cross over and try their fortune upon the streams that flowed
to the Eden. If Degsastan be identified with Dalston, near Car-
lisle, there can be no doubt that, even in the time of Ethelfrid
(593-617), the Angle kings compelled the Britons in Cumber-
land to pay them tribute, even if they had not dispossessed
them of their lands. Whether this displacement occurred under
Ethelfrid, or Edwin, or Oswald, or Oswy, we do not know.
That it was accomplished some time before 685 is certain, for
at that time Lugubalia, or Luel, as the Angle colonists called it,
was a thoroughly Angle city ; in a convent within its walls dwelt
a sister of Egfrid's queen ; it was included within the circuit of
St. Cuthbert^s episcopal visitations ; monasteries were springing
up in the neighbourhood, and priests required to be ordained for
the wants of the district. ^^ And from the fact that the hermit
Herebert, whose name attests his Angle nationality, was at this
time living peaceably on the island in Derwent Water, which to
this day bears his name, it may be inferred, with considerable
probability, that the vale of Keswick, if not the whole valley
watered by the Derwent, was in the possession of the Angles.
That St. Bega founded about this time her monastery in Cope-
land, south of Whitehaven (whence the neighbouring promon-
tory bears the name of St. Bees Head), is a tradition preserved
in Leland^s Collectanea^ but not vouched for by any ancient

^ Florence (Bohn's ed.), p. 386.

*•' Bede, Vita S. Cuthb. ch. xxvii. xxviii. There is not the slightest doubt
that these were Angle monasteries and priests. Those were not the times when
Britons and Angles could live peaceably together on equal terms, even within
convent walls.

594* The Colonisation of Northumhria*

author. Yet there is little reason to doubt it ; for the later
priory of St. Bees, founded early in the twelfth century by
WilUam de INIeschiens, was avowedly a re-foundation of an old
institution which had been destroyed by the Dartes ; so that the
original foundation must at any rate be thrown back beyond the
year 800, at about which time the descents of the Danish pirates
began. How long Carlisle and the country round it remained
in the possession of the Angles, we cannot tell. After the great
defeat of Egfrid in 685, " some of the Britons regained their
liberty,"*^ which they still enjoyed at the time of Bede's death.
This probably refers to the mountainous district of South Cum-
berland, where the Angle power must have been weakest and the
Britons most numerous. From 685, then, we may safely assume
that a small British state existed in Cumberland, which gradually
increased its limits as the decline of the Northumbrian king-
dom became more marked. But it is impossible to believe
that the Angles lost Carlisle and North Cumberland till a
much later date. While Angle kings were leading victorious
expeditions in Ayrshire and on the Clyde, they must have had
a secure base of operations somewhere ; and that base, as we
have already shown, must have been North Cumberland. But
when the Northumbrian state was convulsed by every kind
of political and social disorder, until in 827, not through his
strength but its own weakness, it submitted to the rule of
Egbert of Wessex ; when the settlements on the north shore of
the Solway were overrun by the Scots and Picts; — then we may
reasonably conjecture that Carlisle was taken by the Britons,
and held by them until their final expulsion from Cumberland
in the tenth century. If it had remained Angle, "VVhitherne
could easily have been recovered from the Scots by a people
having the command of the Solway, in which case the l)ishopric
would have been reestablished ; but it never was reestablished :
therefore we infer that Carlisle was lost to the Angles near the
time when Galloway was lost, or about the beginning of the
ninth century.

In the ninth century we can predicate just two facts of Cum-
berland, which, perhaps, are but one. Ethelwerd, a writer of
the tenth century, says that the Danish leader Halfdene, after
occupying the lands about the Tyne in 875, made frequent wars
on the Picts and the men of Cumberland.*'^ Florence of Wor-
cester, under the year 1092, speaking of the rebuilding of Car-
lisle in that year by order of William Rufus, says that it had
been destroyed about 200 years before by the Danes, and had

<« Eccl Hist iv. 26.

^"^ This seems more probable than the statement in the Saxon Chronicle, that
the Strath-clyde Britons were the object of attack.

The ColonisafJon of Northimhria, 595

lain in ruins ever since. It seems probable that tins destruction
was effected in one of Halfdene's raids.

The tenth century, as we dimly see through the loopholes of
occasional notices in intermittent annals, must for Cumberland
and Westmoreland have been a period full of change, marked by
the migration and substitution of races. The British state main-
tained its de facto independence till the middle of the century ;
though, if Malmesbury is to be believed, the great Athelstan
received at Dacor (Dacre, near Penrith), in 926, the submission
of the British king of Cumberland, Eugenius or Ewen. In 945
Edmund, the brother of Athelstan, led an army northwards by.
Windermere and the vale of the R-otha, and encountered the
British forces, under their king Dunmail, at the pass upon the
Cumberland border leading over from Grasmere to Keswick.
The Britons were defeated, and Dunmail was killed; his bones
are said still to rest under tlie gray heap of stones to the left of
the road. Wordsworth, in his poem of '- The Waggoner,'^ has
these lines :

" They now have reached that pile of stones
Heaped over bi-ave King Dunmail 's bones ;
He who had once supreme command,
Last king of rocky Cumberland ; —
His bones, and those of all his power,
Slain here in a disastrous hour."

As the existing population of Cumberland and Westmoreland
shows no trace whatever of Celtic descent, it has been conjec-
tured that the remnant of Britons still occupying the country
were transported after this victory, some to Wales, and others to
the Isle of Man. But Edmund was in no condition to take the
government of Cumberland into his own hands. Northumbria,
owing to the large Danish element which its population now con-
tained, was in a state absolutely chaotic ; and the best thing that
could be done was to place Cumberland under the protection of
the rising kingdom of the Scots. Yet we are forced to believe
that this protection amounted to very little, for not a single fact
in illustration of it is related by the old writers ; nor is it likely
that Carlisle would have remained in ruins had the Scots really
had a firm hold of the country, William of Malmesbury^^ men-
tions Duncan (the King Duncan of Shakespeare's Macbeth) by
the title of king of Cumbria ; by which is probably meant that
in the lifetime of his grandfather, the powerful Malcolm II.,
Duncan reigned as viceroy in Cumberland.

What became of this part of England after the fall of the
British state ? The question has lately, at least in part, been
satisfactorily answered in an excellent little work. The Northmen

« Book ii. oh. 13.
VOL. IV. r r

596 The Colonhation of Northumbria.

in Cumberland and Westmoreland, by Mr. Robert Ferguson. Mr.
Ferguson's theory, which he supports almost entirely by argu-
ments drawn from the existing names of places in the Lake dis-
trict, is that after the Britons were driven out, and when the
Scots showed no intention of recolonising the country, Norwegian
settlers coming from the Isle of Man, and perhaps from other
coasts and islands farther north, and landing in the entrances of
the estuaries of the rivers running into Morecambe Bay or on the
Cumberland coast, gradually settled themselves in most of the
mountain valleys, and partially occupied the plains to the north
and east. We refer the reader to the work itself for the proofs
of this theory. The process was going on, Mr. Ferguson thinks,
during the last forty or fifty years of the tenth century. Hence
it is that so many names, and endings of names, in the Lake dis-
trict have a distinctively Norwegian and riow-Danish significa-
tion. Even the particular district in Norway from which these
settlers came can be pointed out ; it was the Telle-marken, that
grand and desolate region where rise the mountains of the Hard-
anger-feld. For in this district, alone or chiefly, are several words
and parts of words found which are of common occurrence in the
Lake district. Such are, -thwaite (as in Sea-thwaite, Bir-thwaite,
E/Os-thwaite), of which the Norwegian form is thveit, a clearing
in the forest; Scale (as in Scale-hill, Scale-force, &c.), which in
old Norse is sJcdlij a log-hut ; -garth (as in Apple-garth, Cal-garth,
Ho-garth), corresponding to the old Norse gardr, an enclosure.

In the year 1000, we learn from the Saxon Chronicle that
Ethelred ravaged nearly all Cumberland. Ethelred's great ene-
mies were the Danes. This notice, therefore, seems to agree with,
the conclusion to which independent considerations would lead
us, that the population of Cumberland was at this time mainly
Danish or Norwegian.

There is not a gleam of light from this point on to the Nor-
man Conquest. William I. granted Cumberland (with the excep-
tion of a few manors in the extreme south-west of the country)
to Ranulph dc Meschiens, considering, it would seem, that Mal-
colm III., king of Scotland, by making war upon him and aiding
the disaffected English, had forfeited his right to the country .**9
The grant included also that part of Westmoreland which is geo-
graphically connected with Cumberland, namely, the basin of the
upper Eden, of which Appleby is the natural capital. Ranulph
reserved for himself Englewood Forest and the parts adjoining,
" a goodly great forest, full of woods, red deer and fallow, wild
swine, and all manner of wild-beasts,'' and granted to his brother
William the barony of Copeland, bounded by the Duddon, the
Derwent, and the sea. Not that the Scottish kings gave up their
^^ Nicolson and Burn's Hist, of Cumberland and Westmoreland.

The Colonisation of Northimhria* 597

rights in Cumberland without a struggle. Taking advantage of
the confusion caused by a disputed succession, David !._, in the
second year of Stephen, 1136, seized upon Carlisle and other
places, and meeting Stephen at Durham, obtained from him for
his son Henry the concession of the earldom of Cumberland,
Henry doing homage for the same. Cumberland, with the
north-eastern half of Westmoreland, remained during the rest
of Stephen's reign in the hands of the Scottish kings ; but
Henry II. soon after his accession compelled Malcolm IV., the
grandson and successor of David, to surrender it.*''^ The cus-
tody of the county and its castles seems to have remained
from this time in the royal hands; that is, no earl was ap-
pointed j but some powerful baron in the county (the barons
of Gilsland seem to have been particularly favoured in this
way) was appointed sheriff of Cumberland and governor of the
royal castle of Carlisle, which was for many centuries an im-
portant border fortress. The portion of Westmoreland which
had hitherto gone with Cumberland was granted by King John
to Robert de Veteripont, as a distinct barony and sheriffwick, in
the year 1204'. Thus was Westmoreland severed from Cumber-
land, and the latter finally reduced within those boundaries which
it has at the present day.

Of Westmoreland the early history is extremely obscure.
Geographically it falls into two separate territories ; the north-
eastern district, or " bottom of Westmoreland,^' which is the
basin of the upper Eden, and the south-western district, which
consists of the basin of the Ken and that of the upper Lune.
The obvious meaning of the name is " the land of the western
moors," which, considering the physical aspect of the surface, is
intelligible enough. Still, as the word is said to be spelt in
nearly all ancient documents Westmer-land,^^ it is possible that
the central syllable is the word mere, a border, and that the
true meaning is " the land of the western marches." The geo-
graphical attributes that have been mentioned go far to explain
the early political history of the county. The north-eastern dis-
trict, di-ained by the Eden, went with Cumberland ; the south-
western, with Yorkshire. This last assertion will perhaps puzzle
the reader ; yet it can be easily explained. Yorkshire comprised
the whole valley of the Lune till long after the Conquest ; and
between the lower Lune and the basin of the Ken there is a
perfectly easy and short communication. There is but one men-
tion of Westmoreland in the Saxon Chronicle, and that is suffi-
ciently enigmatical. "This year [966] Thored, Gunner's son,

^ John and Rich, of Hexham, quoted by Lingard.

*• Hist, of Cumb. and Westm., by Nicolson and Bum, i. 1. In the Saxon
Chronicle, however, an. 966, the name is Westmoringa-land.

598 The Colonisation of Northumhria,

ravaged Westmoreland/' It T\ould be idle to found conjectures
upon so narrow a substratum as this. All that can be said is,
that it refers to the north-eastern district alone, since the coun-
try round Kendal was not then deemed part of Westmoreland,
and that it seems to indicate an inroad either of Danes or Nor-
wegians. The first Teutonic population of the county was Angle,
as many names of places indicate,^- and entered it, as the dis-
tribution of those names seems to show, partly from Cumber-
land, up the valleys of the Eden and Eamont, partly from York-
shire, either by the Roman road leading over Stainmoor down
upon Brough, or upw^ards from the valley of the Lune. But a
second and stronger wave of Teutonic population was Scandina-
vian, partly Danish and partly Norwegian, as the numerous -bys
and -thwaites, -kirk and castor, instead of church and cester — and
many other names — indicate. To the mountain district of West-
moreland, and all that part of the county included between Win-
dermere and the Ken, the remarks already made respecting the
Norwegian immigration into Cumberland in the tenth century
are equally applicable.

The country round Kendal and Kirkby Lonsdale, as well as
North Lancashire, was included at the time of the Domesday
survey in Evrvicshire, or Yorkshire.^"* It was a distinct barony,
however, having been granted by the Conqueror to Ivo de Taille-
bois, one of his Norman knights. The north-eastern district,
as already explained, was granted, along with Cumberland, to
Ranulf de Meschiens. For many generations the barons of
Kendal exercised independent jurisdiction. Enthroned in their
strong castle (the ruins of which still crown their grassy hill),
overlooking the church-town of the vale of Ken (Kirkby Ken-
dal), their little dominion reaching on one side to the sea, and on
the other engirdled by the coronal of mountains and lofty moors
which hold the fountains of the Ken and its tributary streams,
they must have known little, and cared less, about the fortunes
of Appleby and Brough. The origin of the county of West-
moreland, as the term is now understood, dates from a legal
decision given in 1227, in a suit between AVilliam de Lancaster,
eighth baron of Kendal, and Robert de Yeteripont, the newly-
appointed sheriff of Westmoreland. The sheriff claimed that his
writs should run in the barony, and that the baron and his
tenants should make suit to his county-court at Appleby. These
claims were resisted by William of Lancaster; but the cause was

^' e.g. Askham, Bampton, Dufton, Win ton, Wharton, Heversham, Preston,
Middleton, Hutton, &c.

" Corry, in his History of Lancashire (vol. ii. p. 1), translates Evrvicshire by
Everwickshire^ a county of which he may claim to be the first and sole dis-
coverer.

The Colonisation of Northumhria, 599

given against him, with the proviso that the king's itinerant
justices were to try pleas touching his tenants at Kendal, if so
required. Thenceforward, the county-court for the Kendal and
Appleby districts being one, the county of Westmoreland was
luiderstood to include the barony within its limits. These limits
have ever since remained substantially the same, though part of
Avhat is now Lancashire was included in the county down to the
reign of Henry YII., and the exact border on the side of York-
shire Avas disputed in many places so lately as forty years ago.^*

3. An almost incredible amount of nonsense has been writ-
ten about Lancashire. Whitaker, the w^ell-known historian of
^Manchester, whose investigations into the Roman antiquities
of the county w ere really nseful and fruitful, seemed to lose all
his sagacity when he came to the Saxon times ; and succeeding
antiquaries have emulated or surpassed him in extravagance. He
quietly assumed that, since the south of England, or at any rate
Wessex, was divided into shires towards the end of the seventh
century, therefore there was a shire of Lancaster at the same
period. "About 680^^ was the date he fixed on for the formation
of his imaginary shire. But a Lancaster- shire implies a capital
named Lancaster ; ergo, Lancaster was the capital of the shire
in the seventh century. Such, without exaggeration, is the sub-
stance of Whitaker^s reasoning on this matter.^^ Corry,^^' Brit-
ton and Brayley, and even Mr. Edward Baines,^'^ follow in the
same track. Corry assumes that a " Loncaster-scyre," — he is
evidently punctilious about the orthography, — was at any rate
formed by Alfred, if not earlier ; and the same notion, together
with the word, is taken up by Mr. Baines.

But this hypothesis, when pressed, is found to be absolutely
baseless. Na such political unit as Lancashire was in existence,
by that or any other name, for at least two generations after the
Conquest. In the Saxon times this territory always formed part
of Northumbria; it must have been regarded as a sort of out-
lying province of Deira, lying beyond the western moor-hills,
full of swamps, mosses, forests, and high hills, and only in places
lierc and there repaying the trouble of tillage. To this day little
more than one-fourth of the surface of the county is said to be
under the plough.^^ AVhen Domesday Book w^as compiled, the
southern portion was considered to be in some way attached to
Cheshire, while all thp northern parts were comprehended in
Yorkshire. Thi" wni be more fully explained presently.

That the Teutonic colonisation of this part of England was

'"^ See Hodgson's large map of Westmoreland.

'■' Hist, of Manchester, ii. 122. ^ Hist, of Za7icashire, 1825.

^' Hist, of Count?/ and Duchy of Lancaster ^ 1836.

^^ Lewis's Topogr. Diet.

600 The Colonisation of JSorthumbria,

carried on from the eastward, there can be no reasonable doubt.
No mention or trace of any landing of Saxons, Angles, or North-
men on the Lancashire coast is to be found any where. Nor is
it likely that any part of the county, except a mere fringe along
its southern border, was peopled from Cheshire. Cheshire was
not firmly held by the Mercian kings till after the middle of the
eighth century; nor would the Northumbrian kings, until the
Danish descents had weakened their power, have allowed Mer-
cian settlers to encroach upon their territories. For that Lan-
cashire was from the earliest times deemed part of Northumbria,
seems placed beyond a doubt by the express statements in the
Saxon Chronicle (an. 798, 923) that Whalley and Manchester
were both in that kingdom.

Assuming, then, that the first Teutonic immigrants came
from the eastward, — from Yorkshire, — on what lines did their
colonising operations proceed ? Considerations partly historical,
partly geographical, enable us to answer the question with some
confidence. To the Angles of Deira the natural approaches to
Lancashire must have been three : 1. the Aire valley as high as
Cold Coniston, thence across the low watershed to the Ribble,
near Long Preston, and so down that river; 2. the same route
as far as Long Preston, thence across the easy pass in the hills,
now traversed by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, to the
valley of the Wenning, and down that river to the Lune ; 3. the
Koman road (Iter VI. in Richard of Cirencester's Itinerary)
leading from York by Tadcaster and Slack (Cambodunum), over
the dividing range near Saddleworth, down upon Manchester,
and on to Chester. The two first routes, besides that they evaded
the difficulty of crossing the bleak and barren wastes of moor-
land which form the greater part of the boundary between Lan-
cashire and Yorkshire, and presented the advantage of successive
eligible locations along the whole route, led also to the most
fertile portions of Lancashire, Ribbledale and Lonsdale. That
by these routes the county received the bulk of its Angle popu-
lation, we see little reason to doubt. The third route was pro-
bably most used for military purposes. From the mention by
Bede of the victory of Ethelfrid over the Britons near Chester
in 607, it may be inferred that he must have led his army across
South Lancashire; and it seems highly probable that he took
advantage of the Roman road by Slack, which would lead him
nearly in a direct line to the point he aimed at, and the firm
construction of which must have made it even then, in spite of
winter storms and the neglect of two centuries, passable by help
of slight repairs to an Angle army and its slender baggage-train.

Before the Conquest only two historical events are recorded
as occurring in Lancashire; the notices of these are found in the

The Colonisation of Northumhria. 601

Saxon Chronicle and in Simeon of Durliam. In 798 a battle
was fought near Whalley, a place on the Calder, a tributary of
the Kibble, between Eardulf king of Northumbria, and a rebel
force headed by Wada, the chief among the conspirators who
had murdered King Ethelred two years before. The conspira-
tors had apparently taken refuge in this remote part of the king-
dom, and Eardulf was advancing upon them out of Yorkshire.
Wada was completely defeated. It is also recorded that in the
year 923 King Edward, the son of Alfred, sent a force of Mer-
cians to " Manige-ceaster^^ (Manchester) in Northumbria, to
repair and garrison the place. This was part of the wise policy
which Edward steadily pursued, to curb the turbulence of the
Danish population in the north of England by estabhshing for-
tresses at different places, garrisoned by those on whose fidelity
he could rely. Manchester had probably been laid in ruins in
the course of one of the Danish Halfdene^s devastating raids,
soon after the accession of Alfred.

There is no reason to doubt that the existing boundary 4ine
between Cheshire and Lancashire coincides as nearly as possi-
ble with the southern boundary of the Northumbrian kingdom.
This, then, would appear to be an instance of the abandonment of
the principle of natural boundaries, since the Mersey, which di-
vides the counties, is, above Warrington, a fordable river. But
there was another principle which seems to have had no little
power in the breast of an Anglo-Saxon, and to have modified in
this and other cases his adherence to the first principle; — we
mean his unfeigned respect for the imperial race whose traces he
found every where preexisting in Britain. Thus we read that
the townspeople of Lugubalia (Carlisle) took a pride in showing
to St. Cuthbert the beautiful Roman remains in their city.^9 The
Saxons loved to preserve Roman names of places, though gene-
rally in a corrupt form ; and wherever they found traces of a
Roman encampment, they took care to consign the fact to per-
petual remembrance by embodying the Latin word castra in the
name of the town or village which grew up on the spot. There
is every reason to believe that this was their practice Avhile yet
pagans ; Lege-ceaster (Chester), which was threatened by the
pagan Ethelfrid in 607, must have been so named by the Angles
before Christianity had penetrated so far north ; and Wintan-
cestir (Winchester) and Rhofes-cestir (Rochester) are spoken of
by Bede^^ in such a manner as to make one conclude that they
were already so named when first chosen as bishops' sees. When,
with Christianity, the Latin language and some acquaintance
with ancient history and literature were introduced, these reve-
rential feelings for what was Roman must naturally have been

53 Bede, Vita S. Cuthb. ch. xxvii. ^ Hist Eccl. iii. 7 and ii. 3.

602 The Colonisation of Northumhria,

deepened. Again^ in view of the strong instinct of all colonising
races, but especially of the Teutonic race, to extend their settle-
ments and their administrative systems until stopped by the
natural barriers of seas and mountains, it is not easy to explain
the adoption of the Thames as the boundary between Wessex
and Mercia, except by supposing that the Saxons designed
thereby to sanction and perpetuate a Roman arrangement, in
virtue of which that river had formed the dividing line between
Britannia Prima and Flavia Csesariensis. Similarly, the know-
ledge that under the Romans the Mersey had formed the boun-
dary on the west between Flavia and Maxima Caesariensis pro-
bably induced the Angles of Northumbria and Mercia to acqui-
esce in that conventional frontier.

For the Britons, on the other hand, both Angles and Saxons
seem to have felt such unmeasured aversion and contempt, that
they tried to sweep all trace of them from the face of the land.
Even the holy and venerable man in whom the Angle race
reached its culminating point in history, suffers his pen to wan-
der into expressions of unusual harshness when his subject is
the "impious'^ and "perfidious" race of the Britons. All British
names of places seem to have been designedly repudiated by the
new-comers, and, so far as they could effect it, consigned to ob-
livion. Except in Cornwall and the counties bordering on Wales,
there are but very few^ cases of a town or village bearing a dis-
tinctively British name to be pointed out on the map of Eng-
land; and one of the obvious exceptions, Carlisle (Caer-leol), goes
far to prove the theory supported in our remarks on Cumber-
land, viz. that the Britons recovered Carlisle from the Angles,
arid held it for a long period. For the Angle name was Luel ;
and the Celtic Caer would never have been prefixed to it, had
the place remained uninterruptedly in Angle hands.

A glance at the Domesday record shows that, before it was
compiled, Lancashire had had a long and eventful history, though
it is irretrievably lost for us. All the principal kinds of human
activity, mechanical, political, and spiritual, had there been exer-
cised, and had transmuted the wilderness into a land of tilth,
meadow, and hill-pasture, studded with communities of men
who had " called the lands after their own «iiames.^^ How sug-
gestive, how eloquent to the imagination, are the mere names of
the villages as they stand in the old record ! How do the few
meagre statistics about them, set down in the curtest and most
matter-of-fact way, set one thinking, and reconstructing in one's
mind the form of English society as it was by Irwell-side or
under Pendle Hill eight hundred years ago ! Salford was then
a bigger place than Manchester. Lancaster was merely one
'' vill'' amongst many, and apparently not the most considerable.

The Colonisation of Nor thumb ria. 603

appertaining to tlic manor of Halton, a village higher up the
Lunc. Preston was a place of great importance, — a manor that
had been held by Tosti earl of Northumbria, brother of Ha-
rold, the last of the Saxon kings, to uhich sixty-tvro " vills" in
the district of Amouuderness (i. e. speaking roughly, the country
between the Kibble and the Lune) are enumerated as belonging.
Out of these, however, — so great had been the confusion and
insecurity in Northumbria during the last two centuries, — only
sixteen were inhabited at the time of the survey, and that by few
persons only ; the rest lay waste — '^reliqua sunt wasta/^

All the southern part of Lancashire included between the
^Jersey and the llibblc (terra inter Ripe et Mersham) was in
some way attached to Cheshire at the date of the survey. For
in the chapter relating to Cheshire, when, according to the usual
practice of the compilers of Domesday, after the statistics of the
county town, with which the chapter opens, the names of the
great landholders in the county are specified, the following
passage occurs :

" In Cestre-scire tenet episeopus ejusdem civitatis de rege
quod ad suum pertinet episcopatum.

Totam reliquam terram comitatus tenet Hugo comes de rege
cum suis hominibus.

Terram inter Ripe et Mersham tenuit Rogerius Picta-
vcnsis. Modo tenet rex/^

It seems clear from this passage that the country between
the Ribble and the Mersey was connected with Cheshire at the
time of the Conquest, though granted separately by the Conque-
ror to Roger of Poitou, Cheshire falling to Hugh Lupus. It is,
indeed, quite conceivable that after Northumbria had been irre-
vocably reduced to an earldom, — a change which, according to
Simeon of Durham, took place in 952, — some king of England
should, for purposes of administrative convenience, have attached
this district to the earldom of Mercia, with which, geographi-
cally, it is much more closely connected than with Yorkshire.

Amouuderness also had been originally granted to Roger of
Poitou, but had lapsed to the king before the date of the survey.
Of this district, as also of the two divisions of Lancashire farther
north — namely, Lonsdale South and Lonsdale North — of Sands
(Furness), the statistics appear in Domesday under the head of
Yorkshire.

How these disjecta membra came to be united and consoli-
dated into the great and historic county of Lancaster, it is not
easy to explain with clearness and precision. The centralising
process probably began with the building of the great Norman
keep which still crowns the castle-hill at Lancaster; the owner
of that keep was a man to be feared and courted, and the " Ho-

604 The Colonuation of Northumhria,

nour of Lancaster" was likely euougli to be created in his favour.
The county historians all tell us that Roger of Poitou built the
castle, and was the first lord of the " honour ;"6^ but they seem
unable to adduce any documentary proof to that efi'ect, though
it is probable in itself. If, however, he built the castle, it must
have been after his restoration to his estates and dignities by
William Rufus; otherwise Lancaster would surely have been
more honourably mentioned in Domesday book than as a mere
vill forming part of a large manor. Roger was so unlucky as to
incur forfeiture a second time. The honour, supposing it to
have been then in existence, thus lapsed to the crown. By
Henry I. it was conferred, together with the large crown estates
in Lancashire, on his favourite nephew Stephen, who granted
Purness away to a society of Cistercian monks. It was in right of
these estates that Stephen, at the council of English barons in 1 127,
took an oath to maintain the succession of the Empress Matilda to
the crown .^~ During Stephen's reign the Honour seems to have
remained vested in the crown. At the final pacification in 1153,
it was agreed that William Count of Mortain, Stephen^s only sur-
viving son, should, upon doing homage to Prince Henry, have
granted to him " all the lands and honours possessed by Stephen
before his accession to the throne. "^^ The honour of Lancaster
thus passed to William, who dying without issue, the estates must
have reverted to the crown; and Henry II. seems to have granted
them, together with the titles of Count of Mortain and Lord of
Lancaster, to his youngest son John, from whom, in 1093, dur-
ing Richard I.'s absence on the crusade, the burgesses of Lan-
caster obtained their first charter of incorporation. Again, dur-
ing the reign of John, the honour was merged in the crown. It
so continued during the greater part of the succeeding reign, as
John^s second son Richard was already, as Earl of Cornwall,
sufficiently provided for both in respect of wealth and rank.
In process of time Henry III. had a second son to provide for, —
Edmund, surnamed Crouchback. He could not give him the
earldom of Cornwall; for his brother Richard had a son, also
named Edmund, who succeeded to that by right of inherit-
ance. It is probable that these Lancashire estates formed the
largest mass of property still belonging to the crown ; and they

^' ** The term Honour implied superiority over several dependent manors,
-whose proprietors were obliged to do suit and service to the superior baron or
chief, who kept his Honour-court annually with great pomp." Corry, Hist, of
Lancashire.

^' Our historians appear to think it unnecessary to explain how it was that
Stephen, with his foreign titles and possessions, took the oath as an English
baron. If county-history were more, and more critically, studied, much of the
vagueness, inconsequence, and unreality which attach to our early annals would
be removed.

^ Lingard.

The Colonisation of Northumhria, 605

were granted by Henry III. to Edmund, who was at tlie same
time created Earl (comes) of Lancaster. Here then, and not
before, we have the origin of the shire or county of Lancaster,
" quia comitatus a comite dicitur.^^*^'* Still, however, as the
abbots of Furness exercised, in virtue of their original grant, an
independent jurisdiction in that part of Lancashire which lies
north of the sands, the county was not yet complete. As in the
case of Westmoreland, a legal decision seems to have been the
foundation of that settlement of the county boundaries which
prevails at the present day. The sheriff of the newly-made earl
insisted that his writs should run in Furness. William de Mid-
dleton, the abbot, resisted ; and, being summoned by the king's
justices itinerant to appear at Lancaster, produced his charters,
and in the main substantiated his claim, subject, however, to
this proviso, that he should pay the yearly sum of six shillings
and eight pence to the Earl of Lancaster. The reservation of
this rent did in fact amount to an admission that Furness was
part of the county ; and as such it was henceforward regarded ;
it is so described in a charter of Henry IV. dated in 1412. We
have thus, to the best of our power, got our disjecta membra
pieced together.

4. We must hasten over the chief points in the long history
of the two closely connected counties of Durham and Northum-
berland. The distinction between Deira and Bernicia being
nearly lost sight of after the time of Oswald (642), the two
counties remained undistinguished portions of the Northum-
brian kingdom, so long as it was in being. When, in the reign
of Edred, earls were finally substituted for kings, Osulph was
made the first earl, and the opportunity was seized, if Ingulphus
may be believed, ^^ of dividing Northumbria into shires, ridings,
and wapentakes. But the statement is incredible, or rather has
no meaning, except so far as the minor divisions are concerned ;
for Cumberland and Westmoreland, as has been shown, were at
this time in the hands of the Scottish king. Lancashire did not
become a county till long after the Conquest ; and Northumber-
land and Durham were certainly not shires till a still later period.
Yet it is not unlikely that the great shire of York may have been
constituted at this period, stopping short at the Tees, between
which and the Tweed St. Cuthbert owned most of the land, and
had large powers of jurisdiction, but including large portions of
what are now Westmoreland and Lancashire. The name of
Eoferwic-scir probably crept in gradually, being used within
the county long before the old and expressive name of NorS-
hymbra-land passed out of the mouths of the people of the
rest of England. The change must have been firmly estab-

^^ Sim. Dun. Chron, Eccl. Dunelm. an. 953. ^ Quoted by Lingard.

606 The Colonisation of Northumbria,

lislied — if tlie language of the Saxon Chronicle may be relied
upon — between the years 1016 and 1065. Under the former
year the chronicler describes the march of Canute into North-
umbria in the direction of York, '*^to NorS-hymbran to Eoforwic-
weard/' Under 1065, a gathering is mentioned of all the thanes
in Yorkshire and in Northumberland, " on Eoforwic-scire and on
NorS-hymbra-lande/^ In the annals of the Norman kings down
to Edward I., whenever the name Northumberland occurs, it
must be understood neither of the ancient Northumbria nor of
the modern county alone, but of this last together with Durham,
But how came it that the jurisdiction of St. Cuthbert grew
so potent and reached so far as to create an imperium in imperio
within the Northumbrian kingdom ? To answer this question
satisfactorily would involve a complete and careful analysis of
the famous Legend of Durham ; an enterprise in which, at
the fag end of a long article, we could hardly expect to carry
our readers with us. The outlines of the story are these : St.
Cuthbert, after holding for two years the see which had been
founded by Aidan at Lindisfarne, died in 687, and was buried in
the minster on Holy Isle. His sanctity, and the marvellous
heavenly interpositions which it was believed to draw down, fur-
nished matter for a biography to his countryman the venerable
Bede ; and the Life of St. Cuthbert was copied again and again,
sank deeply into many minds, and was doubtless to be found in
every monastery in the north.^^ By the monks who boasted to
be his spiritual descendants it was declared, after some centuries
had passed, that lands and towns had been freely given to and
accepted by the saint ; that king Egfrid had given him the city
of Carlisle, with all the land round it within a radius of fifteen
miles, and also the lands of Cartmel, on Morecambe Bay, *' with
all the Britons upon them.^^ What we read in the biography
and in the Ecclesiastical History leaves a quite different impres-
sion. In reality, Cuthbert was like one of the old Fathers of
the Desert : he loved to spend his time in solitude, meditating
on eternal truths, and to earn his daily bread by the labour of
his hands. Moreover, he was educated in the school of Bishop
Aidan, who gave every thing away as fast as he received it, and
" had nothing of his ow^n besides his church and a few fields about
it.^'^^ But however this may be, the see was plentifully en-
dowed and enriched under the successors of St. Cuthbert. After
Halfdene(in 875-6) had encamped near the Tyne, and portioned
out a great part of Northumbria among his Danish soldiers, the
then bishop of Lindisfarne, — Eardulf, — in fear perhaps of ac-

^^ In a charter of Athelstan, a " Vita S. Cudberti" is given to his church
along with other valuable presents. Codex Dipt. Ang, Sax. no. 112.
« Hist. Eccl. ii'u 17.

The Colonisation of Northnmhria, 607

lual starvation througli the appropriation of the chnrch-lands
by the Danes, took the body of St. Cuthbert from its resting-
place, and, accompanied by many of the tenants, wandered away
in search of a safer abode. Craik, a small village in the plain of
York, belonging to the see, lying midway between the Ouse and
Derwent, and at that time probably hidden among woods, was
their first place of refuge. The confusion in Northumbria is said
to have abated after Guthrid was chosen king ; and at the end of
seven years the fugitives turned their faces homewards. They
went, however, no farther than Chester-le-Street on the Wear,
being probably deterred from returning to Lindisfarne by its ex-
posed position, so dangerously near to the marauding Scots, whose
kingdom was growing stronger every year, and open to attack
by sea from the Danish pirates. Here the see continued for
about a hundred years ; the succession of bishops is to be found
in Florence. During the miserable reign of Ethelred II. the
Danes again overran the north ; and Bishop Aldhun, taking the
relics with him, found shelter for a time in the monastery of
Ripon. Returning thence in 995, he was led to encamp on the
hill called Dun-holme, the rough steep sides of which were
nearly engirdled by the river Wear, while the top was good land
and tolerably level. A rude tabernacle was built to shelter the
sacred body, then a chapel — a church — finally a cathedral, round
Avhich has grown up the city of Durham.

The above outline of facts, though not vouched for in any
writings earlier than the twelfth centurj^, is probably in the
main not far different from what actually occurred. Partly by
gift, partly by purchase, the see continued to increase its posses-
sions, until \ery nearly the whole of the present county of Dur-
ham, together with the district of Norham and Holy Isle, bor-
dering on the Tweed, were the property of the bishopric. Large
judicial and magisterial powers were exercised by the Bishop all
over the see lands, although in this respect he had no advantage
over the lay holder of a lordship. But the right of asylum, and
the exemption from all secular burdens, were privileges peculiar
to St. Cuthbert and his church.

After the Conquest there seems always to have been a com-
plete administrative separation between Yorkshire and Nor-
thumberland. Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, who was left regent of
the kingdom, jointly with the Bishop of Coutances, while Wil-
liam was in Normandy, seems to have employed sheriffs in both
during the first few years of confusion. It does not distinctly
appear whether Waltheof, the son of Earl Siward, was at any
time acting as Earl of Northumberland. At any rate, he was
imprisoned in 1074, and beheaded in 1075; and soon after-
wards we find Walchere Bishop of Durham carrying on the

608 The Colonisation of Northumhria,

temporal government of Northumberland. " The Bishop," says
William of Malmesbury, " independently of his see, was warden
of the whole county," that is, of Northumberland and Durham.
The Bishop was murdered in a tumultuary rising of the country
people in 1080. About the same time Robert Curthose, the
Conqueror's eldest son, built on the site of the old Angle town
of Monkchester, on the left bank of the Tyne, a strong castle,
which might be of use in curbing any future inroads of the
Scots. This *^* Novum Castrum super Tinam'^ was the nucleus
of Newcastle. Walchere is regarded as the first Bishop who
exercised those "palatine" powers which belonged to the see
for more than four centuries, and which included the right of
coining money, of administering justice, of raising troops, and
of hunting in the royal forests. Still, however, the possessions
of the bishopric were long spoken of as included in the county
of Northumberland. Under William Rufus the earldom was
given to Robert de Mowbray, who lost it through engaging in
treasonable plots in 1095. For the next forty-three years the
county was probably in charge of a vicecomes or high sheriff.
In 1138 Prince Henry, son of David I. of Scotland, was re-
cognised by Stephen as earl of all Northumberland except the
castles of Newcastle and Bamborough. Henry died in 1152;
his eldest son Malcolm became king of Scotland two years later;
and his second son, William, took the earldom, but had to sur-
render it in 1157, under the treaty by which Malcolm gave
up all his rights over the three northern counties. From this
period down to the reign of Richard II. the government of
Northumberland seems to have been carried on by high sheriffs
stationed at Newcastle. The earldom was granted to the Percy
family in 1377. At what precise period the bishopric came to be
regarded as a separate county it is not easy to say. Even in the
fifteenth century it was doubted whether Hartlepool, which,
though surrounded by the possessions of the see, did not belong
to it, was in Durham or Northumberland. The palatine rights
of the bishopric were materially abridged by Henry VIII., and in
modern times have been altogether abrogated : the last to ex-
ercise them was Bishop Van Mildert. The outlying portion of
Durham along the Scottish border was only incorporated with
Northumberland in the year 1841.

[ 609 ]

THE RISE OF THE ENGLISH POOR-LAW.

With all its anomalies, the English poor-law is perhaps the
most characteristic result of that common social and political
activity which is expressed by the words "constitution in Church
and State." The form of words belongs to a time when the
Church was not only an aggregate of bishoprics and parishes,
but a great living corporation, the representative and patroness
of all other corporate bodies, the teacher and mistress of all the
civilisation and progress which depend on social cooperation,
and are independent of the control of the State, — when she
was the almoner of the poor, the educator of the ignorant, the
repositary of science and art, the maker of roads, the builder of
bridges, the cultivator of lands, and the promoter of medical
science by her hospitals, and of commerce and manufacture by
her guilds. If we understand by " Church" merely the Establish-
ment in relation to our present society, with its chapter-houses
and cathedrals, its privileges and its means of proselytism, the
phrase " constitution in Church and State" represents a nuisance
which loudly asks for reform. But if we understand " Church"
in its representative and symbolic sense, as denoting all natural
and voluntary associations and corporations which aim at objects
outside the sphere of political regulation, the phrase is still the
venerable formula of English liberty. It proclaims that there is
in our society something previous to the State — a corporate life
of the people in families, associations, and religious bodies, over
which the State has no sovereign control ; and it asserts, more-
over, that the two elements. Church and State, though indepen-
dent of each other, yet together form one inseparable whole,
and coalesce in one " constitution/^ If we wish to know what
particular parts of our constitution we owe chiefly to the Church,
and what to the State, we shall have to examine separately
each element of our laws, and to trace its development from
the beginning of our history.

For instance, political economists who go so far as to own
that the State may be bound to guarantee employment at ample
wages to all who are born, which was the principle of the Eliza-
bethan poor-law, add the condition that, if it does this, it is
bound in self- protection, and for the sake of every purpose for
which government exists, to provide that no person shall be born
without its consent. " Society can feed the necessitous if it
takes their multiplication under its control, .... but it cannot
with impunity take the feeding on itself, and leave the multiply-

610 The Rise of I he English Poor-Latv.

ingfrcc."* In a similar way, the evils resulting from mendi-
cancy and vagrancy have often occasioned the enactment of
severe laws against private almsgiving, and the prohibition of all
doles except those distributed through certain channels. Yet
what can be more monstrous than that the State should claim a
sovereign control over marriage, and over the acts of Christian
charity ?

For the Church, with her crowds of religious persons vowed
to celibacy and labour, had a corresponding right to encourage
population and to feed the miserable. Her clergy and nuns, by
their self-imposod abstinence, made room for the multiplication
of those who had not received the gift of continence ; her labori-
ous monks, who could not consume the fruit of their own toil,
had a right to confer it upon the miserable. In doing this they
did no mjury to the commonwealth; and the State recognised
their claim when it acquiesced in the law that " the miserable "
belonged to the sphere of the ecclesiastical tribunals. The
Church had purchased for them a place in society, and had given
them a right of existence which was not recognised in the Pagan
state. The State at first was grateful for this, and willingly co-
operated wdth the Church in her measures of poor-relief; but
in time, partly through abuses in the Church, partly through
the inconveniences necessarily arising from the arrangement,
and partly through oblivion of the evil from which the Church
had once delivered society, the State separated itself from the
Church, then opposed her, and at last deprived her of all means
of fulfilling this mission, and so found itself obliged to undertake
what had hitherto been the function of the Church.

The provision made for the poor by the medieval Church
may be divided into two parts. The first was an imperative
tax laid on the owners of property. A law, attributed to St.
Simplicius, ordered that one quarter of the tithes should be a})-
propriated to the maintenance of the poor of the parish. The
second was the fruit of voluntary acts of self-sacrifice made
by the clergy and religious, who devoted themselves, and the
pious laity, who devoted their property, to the maintenance of
the poor. Of these two modes of provision, the first was that
which had the earlier political significance. For, as the first
necessity of civilisation^ after the break-up of the Roman system
in Europe, was to settle the roving barbarians in fixed habita-
tions, where their families and their property might give some
security for their good behaviour, Church and State both strove
to attach the population to the soil. The council of Tours in
the sixth century ordered that each place should maintain its
own poor, and prevent the vagabondage of mendicants ; and

' Mill, Political Economy, fourth ed., 18-57, i. 430.

The Rise of the English Poor- Law, 611

though the laws of Dagobert, Pepin, and Charlemagne protected
the religious pilgrim, yet pilgrimages were discouraged by the
gravest divines ; and the growing custom, which made all the
inhabitants of a district answerable for the delinquencies of each,
tended to put social difficulties in the way of unlimited vagabond-
age. But after the tendency to local settlement had developed
into the system of serfage, the needs of civilisation became differ-
ent. The mobilisation of the population became the great prob-
lem of the age. The share which the Church took in this great
work has never been sufficiently appreciated. The agency which
she employed was not the parochial relief given by the secular
clergy, but the exceptional action of the religious orders. The
Benedictines had already performed a similar service to the
world. They had shown the way to fuse together the Goth and
the Roman patrician on the common ground of manual labour,
and to make it possible for their descendants to dig their gardens
or farm their estates without losing caste, as they might in a
land of slaves. But in the middle ages the*Benedictines did not
directly promote the manumission of individual serfs, except as
the founders of burghs, where the slave might become free after
habitation for a year and a day, yet prepared for their wholesale
emancipation by helping to bring about those conditions of
property without which the emancipated serf could not obtain a
living. In the early years of the feudal system land was not
saleable, because there was no moveable property to give for it.
It could only change owners by being given to the Church,
which leased it out to farmers. Thus the exclusiveness of feudal
property was first broken down. The system of leaseholds be-
came common in Church property long before it was introduced
into secular domains, and many of the serfs were raised to the
condition of free tenants. Thus the Church, still remaining an
aristocratic proprietor, began the mobilisation of real property,
and paved the way for that division of land and improved culture
without which the existence of the third estate is impossible.

In the mobilisation of the serf himself the Church had a
great share. The popular tendency towards breaking connection
with the soil found its religious expression in the Crusades and
in pilgrimages, and a sanction as well as an expression in the
extraordinary and sudden development of the military and men-
dicant orders. At this period the history of the Church shows
that pity for the weak and oppressed was elevated into the domi-
nant passion of Christendom. The military orders consecrated
weakness. The forlorn condition of the widow and orphan lost
its reproach, and was raised into a kind of sacred state, able to
impart a blessing to its champions. The Franciscans did for
pauperism and leprosy, for the vagrant and mendicant, what the

VOL. IV. * *

612 The Rise of the English Poor-Law\

Benedictines had done for labour, and the military orders for
the orphan and widow.

Not that these movements grew from any formed political
idea. They were religious in intention only; and whatever politi-
cal results arose from them were a spontaneous and unlooked-
for growth. The pilgrimage was the pretext on which the serf
wandered from his lord's domain.^ The crusade, by arming
masses of serfs, must have had an influence on their eventual
emancipation, analogous to that of the standing army of Russia,
which has led to a like result, or to the probable effect of the
arming of slaves by the American Confederacy. The religious
orders crowned the edifice, not only by the provision which their
hospitals and charitable institutions made for the houseless wan-
derer, but by the religious sanction the example of the mendi-
cant friars gave to the vagabondage which all historians own to
have been a necessary, however lamentable, concomitant of the
transition from slavery to freedom. The condition of the va-
grant beggar could not have become more tolerable than that of
the immobilised serf, unless his condition had been made honour-
able and respectable, by being shared with the most respected of
ecclesiastics. It is thus not only true that vagrancy, with its
train of ills, was the shadow of a good already accomplished — be-
cause, '^ if the people had not ceased to be slaves, they could not
have possessed a freedom of action, or resorted to vagrancy as a
means of living" — but it is further true that it was the necessary
atmosphere, the condition sine qua non, of the process of accom-
plishing this good. It was so understood by contemporaries
most interested in the question. The feudal lords, in their
efforts to check the movement, made no direct laws against eman-
cipation, but only against vagrancy and mendicancy, as know-
ing that if they could check these the cause of them would be
stifled. As long as the Church had been content to practise
local almsgiving, without encouraging the poor to emigrate from
their homes, the lords accepted her cooperation, and allowed
her to support their worn-out labourers. But as soon as she
became an aid to the serf in his attempts to gain his freedom, an
opposition sprang up which increased in violence till its climax
in the sixteenth century. There is no doubt that Wat Tyler in-
surrections. Jack Cade riots, and Pilgrimages of Grace, naturally
incidental as they are to the fermentation which changes the
rough juice of barbaric society into the wine of civilisation, are
terrible evils in themselves, and doubly terrible to the classes
which they menace. The legislature tried to kill the weed in
the roots by cutting off vagrancy. This was the first germ of

' The Act 12 Richard II., 1388, contained a clause against servants or la-
bourers moving from their residences " by colour to go in pilgrimage."

The Rise of the English Poor-Law. 613

our civil poor-law. While the Church fed the wanderer and
blessed the mendicant, the State enacted penal laws against the
vagrant, the sturdy beggar, and the person who relieved them;
it tied each peasant to the soil, took from him all right of loco-
motion, except at stated intervals and under strict conditions,
settled the amount of his wages, and prescribed the time he was
to work for his master. The Church, in the council of Toulouse,
defended the wanderer, and reenacted the laws of Dagobert,
Pepin, and Charlemagne, in his favour. The State enacted that
no servant or labourer, man or woman, should at the end of his
terra leave his master or his home, to serve or dwell elsewhere,
or to go on pilgrimage, without license under the king's seal,
under pain of the stocks, and further punishment at the discre-
tion of the justices. He was to be compelled to work at the
fixed price ; and both man and master were punished if higher
wages were given. Any one who had been an agricultural
labourer up to the age of twelve years was to remain so for life,
and not to get apprenticed in a town, where he might gain his
liberty by residence for a year and a day. Beggars were to be
treated as vagrant labourers ; impotent beggars were allowed to
remain in the town where they found themselves, unless it was
incapable of supporting them, when they were to remove to the
place of their birth. The Franciscans were the missionaries and
hospitallers of the v^retched suburbs of the towns where the
vagrants would naturally congregate. There the serf flying
from his lord would find in them protectors, who would do their
best to hide him from the strict search which the magistrates
were directed to make for him by such poor-laws as then
existed. These first germs of our civil poor-law are simply re-
pressive; they make no provision for any one; they look like
" an attempt to restore the expiring system of slavery,^-* and to
repress the abuses which naturally grow like a fungus from a
soil rich in ecclesiastical foundations of charity, which often en-
courage the idle and profligate as much as the deserving poor.
'* The hospitality of the abbeys,-'^ says Fuller, '^ was charity mis-
taken; they only maintained the poor they made. Vagrants
came to consider the abbey their inheritance, till beggary was
entailed on their posterity.'^ " The blind eleemosynary spirit,"
says Hallam, " was notoriously the cause, not the cure, of beg-
gary and wretchedness. It promoted the vagabond mendicity
which the severe statutes in vain endeavoured to repress." The
same criticism was passed in France. Henry II., in 1547, ob-
liged all religious foundations to discontinue their alms to
mendicants, because it only served "d^attraire les valides, et
les detournoit d'oeuvrer et travailler."

Thus we have three original elements of the poor-law — two

614 The Rise of the English Poor-Law.

ecclesiastical and one civil. The first was the local, parochial,
and compulsory relief of the poor, reduced to system, and founded
on principles which, though next to impracticable in the State,
are fundamental in the moral code of the Church. " Extreme
necessity," says the canon law, "makes all things common ;^^
" it excuses theft, and palliates robbery with violence ;" " in a
general dearth food becomes common property;" and even in
ordinary times " both clergy and laity are bound to provide alms,
even by their own manual labour, in order to assist those in ex-
treme need." And the ecclesiastical tribunals were empowered to
enforce these principles. "Although the poor man could not
bring a direct action against the rich to compel him to assist him,
yet he might implore the ecclesiastical judge to compel him," by
the use of the means entrusted to his discretion; for, in the
Church, acts of charity are as real duties as those of justice; and
she has a right to employ whatever compulsory measures the
state of society allows her to use in forcing her children to do
their duty. But the odiousness of this power of compelling
the laity to perform the duties of charity was mitigated by the
exemplary self-denial of ecclesiastics, who by their self-restraint
checked the tendency to overpopulation, and by their labours
secured a surplus of food to distribute to whomsoever they
pleased. The abbeys and hospitals were the centres of this
voluntary and arbitrary charity, which formed the second eccle-
siastical element in the system of poor-relief. These two ele-
ments formed the substantial and positive basis of poor-relief;
the third requisite was a negative check upon the abuses to
which they would naturally give birth. The tendency of the
principles of the Church was to break down the absolutism
of property in favour of the needy. On the other side was the
State, with its notions of property so rigid, absolute, and one-
sided, that it made property of men, in order to secure to the
owner the usufruct of his domains. This antagonism found ex-
pression first in the savage legislation against rogues and vaga-
bonds, and then in the pillage of the Reformation. Such was the
way in which the State discharged its function of seeing that the
exuberant charity of the Church did not exceed the bounds of
just economy, and promote the growth of a dissolute and idle
proletariate, to the detriment of the aristocracy and the la-
bourers.

Each of these three elements of the poor-law had its period
of predominance. In the height of the feudal system, when the
serfs were attached to the soil, parochial relief was the only
thing wanted ; the interests of the lord led him to institute
sufficient checks upon idleness. In the period of emancipa-
tion and mobilisation of the serfs, the voluntary relief of the

. The Rise of the English Poor-Law, 615

religious orders -n-as chiefly in request ; so much so that the old
regulation, appropriating a fourth part of the tithe to the paro-
chial poor, fell into disuse, and it became a common thing to
make over the tithes of a parish to an abbey or hospital. The
necessary result of this was to divert the tithes from the relief of
the parish poor. Hence arose a new quarrel between the secular
and the regular clergy, and between the regular clergy and the
State. The celebrated Walter Map, before 1200, and the more
celebrated Kobert Grosseteste, in the first half of the next cen-
tury, satirised and opposed the endeavours of the monasteries to
appropriate the possessions and tithes which were meant for local
uses and resident priests. Archbishop Stratford, in the provincial
synod held in London, Oct. 10, 1342, declared that it was the
office of churchmen to see that the poor were not defrauded of
their share of the tithes and other ecclesiastical property, and
that the local poor had a better right than strangers to the tithes
of any given parish. But, he continued, when the regular clergy
obtained the impropriation of benefices, they applied the pro-
ceeds to their own uses, or to relieve their own poor ; hence, he
said, proceeded the general indevotion of tithe-payers and the
audacity of church-robbers. He therefore decreed that, in every
case of appropriation of a benefice to a religious house, a certain
proportion of the revenue, to be determined by the bishop, should
be given in alms to the poor of the parish, under pain of seques-
tration. Fifty years afterwards, in 1392, the legislature enacted
a similar law. In every license of appropriation of tithes to a
religious house, the bishop was to ordain a convenient sum of
money to be distributed yearly out of it to the poor parishioners.
The concentration of charitable foundations in these religious
establishments, and the great doles distributed at their doors,
caused an endless movement of the poor population, which soon
produced social evils and political troubles like the risings of
Tyler and Cade. And now the objection which, when originally
made by William de Sancto Amore against the Mendicants, was
inapplicable and unjust, became more and more true politi-
cally. " If," he said, " religious men who are able-bodied and
strong may live on alms without labouring with their hands,
others may do the like. But if all were to choose to live in that
way, society would perish.^ '^ By their example, says an invec-
tive against the English Friars,

'' debacchantur servi
Et in servos Domini nimis sunt protervi."*

When the movement became such as they could no longer sanc-
tion, they lost their popularity with the people by opposing

3 Inter Op. S. Thorn. Aquin., vol. xix. p. 341.
* Monumenta Franciscana, Append, p. 592.

616 The Rise of the English Poor-Law.

them, but did not regain the favour of the rich, who looked
upon them as the cause of a state of things in which, as a con-
temporary poet sings,

" Servit nobilitas, et rusticitas dominatur,
Ad res illieitas omnis plebs prascipitatur,"*

This state of things introduced the period of the predominance
of the third element of our poor-law, when, in opposition to
the Church, which with indiscriminate benevolence had relieved
all applicants, thus encouraging vagrancy, and collecting masses
of dissipated vagabonds round her great houses, the State set
itself to put down vagrancy by the most cruel laws, to force
every landless man to have an ostensible employment, to dis-
tribute the eleemosynary relief equally through all districts,
instead of allowing it to accumulate in centres, which therefore
became thronged with pauper pilgrims, and to confine the
labouring classes to the places where they were born.

It is strange that this merely negative system should have
recommended itself to statesmen as, in itself, a sufficient solution
of the problem of poor-relief. But theory was aided by passion ;
and, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, the inconveniences
of mendicity had increased to such a pitch that the one thing
needful seemed to be the destruction of the evil in its roots.
Hence an Act of 1530, after providing that the impotent poor
might beg within the limits assigned them by the magistrates,
and that sturdy beggars should be whipped at the cart's tail,
and passed to their parishes, went on to ordain that scholars
without letters from their universities, shipwrecked mariners,
proctors, pardoners, quacks, physiognomists, and pal misters, when
caught begging, were to be whipped, whipped and pilloried, or
whipped, pilloried, and curtailed of their ears, and that their
harbourers and relievers were to be fined at the discretion of the
justices.

Those who are acquainted with Chaucer's pictures of English
manners will have no difficulty in seeing that this law was directed
against the same religious abuses which he had satirised two
centuries before, and will acquiesce in the commentary of Sir
George NichoUs, who observes that "the priests and inferior
clergy were all, more or less, beggars or solicitors of alms, and
those of the mendicant orders were professedly such ; so that,
partly from custom, and partly from teaching and example, not
only was begging tolerated, but the profession of a beggar was
regarded as not being disgraceful. Against habits and impres-
sions thus countenanced and upheld the legislature had to struggle
in its endeavours to suppress mendicancy."

» Political Songs, i. 227.

The Rise of the English Poor-Law. 61 T

But the legislature was not satisfied with merely repressing
the abuse of the system of relief doled out at the great centres
of ecclesiastical wealth; it went on to attempt to restore the
older system of parochial relief. The contribution^ however, was
not made compulsory upon the rich parishioners ; nor was any
fixed provision made for the poor by a return to the allotment
of a quarter of the tithes to the poor. The Act of 1535 (27
Henry VIII. c. 25), after ordering valiant beggars to be set to
work, and the impotent poor to be supported, enacts that the
mayors of towns, and the churchwardens, and two others of
every parish, should systematically collect voluntary alms of
the parishioners every Sunday and holiday, in such wise as
that the poor, impotent, sick, and diseased people might be
provided and relieved, and the lusty poor might be daily kept
in continual labour, so that every one should get his own living
with his own hands. The parochial clergy were to exhort their
flocks to contribute; an account-book was to be kept of the
sums collected and spent; and the Act especially provides that
this book was not to remain in the custody of the parson of the
parish. No alms was to be given by any person otherwise than
to the common boxes and gatherings, upon pain of forfeiting
ten times the value of every such illegal gift. And all persons
and bodies politic and corporate bound to distribute alms were
thenceforth to give the same into the common boxes. This clause,
which deprived the religious houses of all their eleemosynary
functions, and reduced to a minimum that element of poor-relief
of which they were the representatives, was logically followed,
the next year (1536), by the suppression of the small abbeys and
religious establishments, and in 1539 by the dissolution of all the
rest except a few hospitals and schools. There seems to have
been a Utopian idea current that, as the religious houses were
the direct causes of the vagrancy which infested the realm, when
these were destroyed, and their revenues distributed among the
courtiers and gentry, the new beneficiaries would voluntarily
perform all the duties of parochial relief within their own dis-
tricts, vagrancy would die out, the local poor would be duly
cared for, the lands would be delivered out of mortmain, and
the country would be prosperous. There was a profound feeling
against the whole ecclesiastical system. As in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries the scandal given by the wealthy clergy,
secular and regular, had given birth to movements for which
the mendicant orders had supplied a homoeopathic cure, so, in
the sixteenth, there had again arisen an indignation against the
new abuses that were protected by the separate jurisdiction of
the spiritual courts, and a conviction that the mendicant friars
had, with some exceptions, become infected with the diseases

618 The Rise of the English Poor-Laic.

which they had undertaken to cure. Towns were unsafe through
the throngs of profligate idlers congregated round the abbeys and
hospitals ; measures of severity had been tried in vain ; and the
civil governments began to take into their own hands the ad-
ministration of the "miserable'^ classes, to which the ecclesi-
astical government had notoriously become unequal. In France
as well as in England there was a tendency to restore the old
parochial system of relief, with contributions either voluntary
or compulsory, to abolish the system of hospices as an en-
couragment to vagrancy, and to transfer the administration
and control from the clergy to the officials of the State. In
Grenoble the government in 1530 imposed a tax on house-
holders to make up the deficiency of the voluntary collections
for the poor. In 1538 the parliament of Toulouse imposed a
poor-rate upon all ecclesiastics, officers of justice, nobles, and
burgesses. In 1543 and 1544 the municipality of Paris was
ordered to levy an annual eleemosynary tax for the poor upon
all princes, nobles, ecclesiastics, religious communities, burgesses,
and proprietors, and jurisdiction was given to compel the pay-
ment of the sums assessed. This system seems to have been
enforced for some time; thirty years afterwards, in 1578, we
find that collectors who refused to levy the tax were compelled
to advance a loan of 500 crowns. But these compulsory poor-
rates were only local and temporary; they took no root in
France. The edict of Henry II., in 1547, makes no mention
of them. This edict is in most respects similar to the law of
Henry YIII. Workhouses were to be established for sturdy
beggars, and home-relief provided for the infirm poor. In each
parish the clergy and marguilliers, or churchwardens, were to
make a list of the poor, who were to receive, either at home,
or in some other convenient place, reasonable alms out of
money to be collected at the church-doors, or from house to
house. Then followed the suppressive clause. All abbeys,
priories, chapters, and colleges which by ancient foundation
were obliged to give public alms to mendicants, were to ab-
stain from doing so, because it only attracted the sturdy and
made them refuse to work. The money was thenceforth to be
put into the parochial box. The richer abbeys were allowed
some liberty of choice ; but they were ordered to assist in pre-
ference those parishes where the poor were most immerous and
the alms most scanty. This measure might have been logically
followed in France, as in England, by the destruction of the
houses thus deprived of their eleemosynary functions. But they
were saved ; partly, perhaps, by the commendam. If the great
lords in England had been holders of the richest benefices and
abbeys, the dissolution would have been only partial. As it was.

The Rise of the English Poor-Laio. 619

every thing conspired to their ruin. The opinion of the mystic
omnipotence of the State, which characterised the politicians of
the Renaissance, favoured a government which confidently under-
took the arduous functions of poor-relief at the very moment
when it was about to squander the means for performing them.
The palpable failure of the religious eleemosynary system to keep
down pauperism had alienated the aristocracy. The nascent com-
mercial spirit felt itself stifled and fettered by the accumula-
tions of real property in mortmain, unbalanced by any sufficient
quantity of moveables and personalty. The privileges of the
clergy not only seemed hurtful, but they contradicted the
^' elegance^^ and unity which was the aim of the lawyer, and were
offensive to the dignity of the layman. And the exasperation
against mendicants and vagrants had become so great, that the
public were willing to be rid of them even by the barbarous pro-
cesses of the latter years of Henry VIII., when 38,000 persons
suffered death as vagrants, besides the 72,000 who, during the
course of his reign, were hanged for theft. Even still, after the
lapse of three centuries, public opinion refuses to honour those
whose religious celibacy and self-denying labour enable them, as
well as give them an economical right, to maintain an unproduc-
tive proletariate.

In theory, the union of the spiritual and temporal jurisdic-
tions in the king's hand did not destroy their distinction. They
were two powers coinciding in one person, like the Austrian and
Hungarian crowns. Their functions were kept distinct ; and, in
spite of the great reaction against the Church, poor-relief, though
regulated by the civil authorities, remained in substance the duty
of the ecclesiastical corporations. After a brief attempt to ag-
gravate the atrocity and vindictiveness of the law against vagrants,
by making slaves of them and their children, the legislation under
Edward VI. fell into the course begun under Henry VIII. in
England, and by Henry II. in Erance. In 1551 a Bill was
passed to make a more ample provision for the impotent poor,
by rendering the assessment compulsory, not recoverable how-
ever by civil proceedings, but only in the bishops^ court. Any
one frowardly refusing to give towards the help of the poor, or
discouraging others from doing so, was first subjected to the ex-
hortations of the parson and churchwardens, and then to those
of the bishop, who, on failure of gentle means, was empowered
*^ to take order according to his discretion." This provision was
continued under the reign of Mary ; but the bishop's discretion
was limited under Elizabeth (1563) by a provision enabling him
to bind the froward defaulter, under a penalty of 10/., to appear
at the next sessions (thus transferring his cause to the civil
tribunals), where the justices, after finding persuasion useless.

620 The Rise of the English Poor-Law.

"were empowered to "tax, sesse, and limit upon every such obsti-
nate person so refusing, according to their good discretion, what
sum he should pay." In default, he was to be committed to
prison till he paid the rate and all arrears.

The secularisation of the poor-relief was further promoted by
making the hundred, and not the parish, the area of rating, as
the justices were substituted for the bishops and parsons. This
tendency was still further developed in 1572 by an Act which
gave the magistrates the entire control of the poor within their
divisions, and enabled them to settle paupers in convenient places,
and to appoint overseers to govern them. It also legalised an
appeal against excessive assessment, which it ordered to be made
after a proper estimate of the probable expenses; the justices
were also empowered to call upon neighbouring hundreds to
assist those which were overburdened with their own poor.
Prom this time the legislature went on for a quarter of a century
in the same direction, taking the control of relief more and more
from the spiritual functionaries, and occupying itself with the de-
tails of its administration. It settled the bastardy laws in 1575,
provided that the sturdy poor should be set to work under collectors
and governors, and gave the most minute directions about the
kind of labour, and the materials on which it was to be employed-.
It also ordered houses of correction to be established under
" censors" and " warders." But in 1 597 there was a manifest
reaction, and a return towards the old ideas. Thfe legislation of
this year was contained in three distinct Acts, 39 Eliz. cc. 3, 4,
and 5. The first reestablished the old parochial system of relief.
The overseers appointed by the justices under the Act of 1572
were continued ; but the churchwardens were overseers ex -officio.
Besides the rate, voluntary collections in money and kind were
to be made weekly, and a board to be held every Sunday in
church after the afternoon service. The Act also borrowed from
the ecclesiastical law the important principle which made parents
and children, and grandparents and grandchildren, mutually
liable for each other^s support. The second Act embodied the
traditional legislation of the State against vagrancy and mendi-
cancy. Sturdy beggars were to be stripped naked and whipped,
and sent to the place of their birth or last residence, there to be
put to labour. And the third Act re\ived the system of volun-
tary hospices, which had received so rude a shock from the disso-
lution of monasteries. Charitable persons were enabled to found
hospitals, maisons de Dieu, abiding places, or houses of correction,
as well for the sustentation and relief of the maimed poor, needy,
or impotent people, as to set the poor to work. These hospitals
were to be incorporated, and have perpetual succession for ever, and
were to be ordered and visited as the founder chose to appoint.

The Rise of the English Poor-Laiv, 621

The division of these three branches of one subject into three
separate Acts is a sign that the legislature intended to preserve
and restore the three distinct functions of poor-relief which were
originally divided between the Church and the State. First was
the compulsory parochial relief, in which the poor-rate took the
place of the fourth part of the tithe ; next came the repressive
function of the State to obviate the economical dangers of a legal
provision for the poor; and, thirdly, the system of voluntary
hospices was legalised, and their management was left to inde-
pendent corporations. The Elizabethan poor-law of 1601, which
is still the foundation of our system, only united and amalgamated
these three functions ; it introduced no new principle, and de-
stroyed no old one. Our poor-law still rests on the parochial
system of compulsory alms, on the voluntary system of incorpo-
rated hospitals and almshouses, and on the repressive action of
the State, neutralising the temptations to idleness and improvi-
dence held out by these institutions.

It is very doubtful whether the unity and centralisation of
the law of 1601 is productive of unmixed good. It introduced
a system under which in later times the workhouse became a
hospice for the impotent, a place of work for the sturdy pauper,
and a house of correction for the vagabond. It is almost im-
possible that the same establishment, under the management of
one superintendent, should serve all these purposes. Accordingly,
before the reform of 1834, the workhouse had become the hos-
pice of all the parish poor, even those who deserved correction
rather than hospitality ; while the tendency when the new law
was first passed was to make it a house of correction and dis-
comfort even for those who had a right to it as a hospice. The
workhouse as a refuge for the old was administered by the
same regulations that governed it as a mere test of the able-
bodied pauperis need ; and old couples were, for the sake of uni-
formity, subjected to the rules necessary for preventing younger
paupers breeding hereditary paupers in the workhouse itself.
The principle was generalised that, in order to free the gua-
rantee of support from its injurious efiects upon the minds and
habits of the people, it was necessary to accompany the relief
with irksome conditions, with restraints upon freedom, and with
the privation of some indulgences. And the tendency of the
law is to make the aged and impotent poor afraid of asking
for what they ought to have, because they cannot think of the
workhouse as a hospice, but only as a penitentiary. This would
be avoided if the administration of the relief of the infirm and
aged poor were left to the parochial system aided by charitable
foundations, while the government kept a still stricter control
over the relief of the able-bodied pauper in the union workhouse.

The Rise of the English Poor-Law,

The State to regulate, the -anion to apply the labour-test to the
able-bodied applicant for relief, the parish, aided by the hospice,
not by the workhouse, to provide a refuge for misfortune, sick-
ness, and age, seems to be the right combination. It is the one
most consonant with the principles of our poor-law, the imperfec-
tions of which are attributable to its having been produced in an
age Avhen wrong notions of the union of Church and State were
prevalent, and reformed in an age of economists and calculators,
who took too little heed of the distinct and antagonistic forces
upon which our poor-law is built.

[ &23 ]

DR. SMITH'S DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE.i

The success of Dr. Smith's Dictionaries of Greek and Eoman
Antiquities, Biography, and Greography, has been such as might
well encourage even a less enterprising editor to undertake a
similar publication intended to elucidate the literature, anti-
quities, biography, geography, and natural history, of the Bible.
A work of this nature was certain to enlist the interest of a far
more extensive circle of readers than that for which the other
dictionaries were intended ; and the difficulty of securing able
contributors from the many accomplished scholars of whom
the Established Church may justly boast could not be great.
The plan of a Dictionary of the Bible was no novelty ; it had
been frequently executed ; but the progress of biblical researches
and the discoveries of recent travellers had outstripped the
learning of even the latest and best of existing dictionaries.
Dr. Smith might not unreasonably declare to himself that he
was providing for one of the wants of the day.

The first Bible Dictionary worth mentioning was given to
the world by Dom Calmet. The deficiencies of the older dic-
tionaries had been made so glaring by the publication of his
Commentary on the Old and New Testament, and the Disserta-
tions appended to it, that the friends of the learned Benedic-
tine induced him to publish a work giving the substance, in a
concise form and in alphabetical order, of all the matters dis-
cussed by him in the Commentary. Dom Calmet's Dictionary
was an extremely valuable work at the time in which it ap-
peared ; it was immediately republished at Geneva, and became
an authority among Protestants as well as among Catholics ;
and it has served as the basis of many more recent works of
the same kind. Its defects are, at the present day, visible
enough. Biblical science, properly speaking, and particularly
that department of it known under the name of * Introduction,"
must be considered the creation of one of Dom Calmet's literary
adversaries, the celebrated Father Eichard Simon, of the Ora-
tory, who startled and shocked all his contemporaries, Catholic
and Protestant, not merely by the paradoxes and untenable
propositions which are scattered through his works, but per-
haps still more by the statement of facts and principles which
no scholar would, at the present day, think of calling in ques-
tion. The science thus created by a French Catholic priest has

^ A Dictionary of the Bible, comprising its Antiquities, Biography, Geography y
and Natural History. Edited by William Smith, LL.D. 3 vols. (London:
John Murray.)

624 Br. Smith's Dictionary/ of the Bible,

chiefly been cultivated in Protestant Germany. It could only
originate in a quarter free from the dogmatic prejudices pecu-
liar to orthodox Protestantism concerning the divine character
of the sacred writings ; and such a quarter might be tho-
roughly Christian.- But, on the other hand, some of the most
important questions which are involved in the progress of the
science could only arise historically through the negation of
the most elementary principles of Christianity. Life must be
extinct before an organism can be subjected to a complete dis-
section and analysis ; and many of the questions raised by the
German critics would never have occurred to any one, had the
Bible and its component parts been regarded as the channels
in any true sense of a divine revelation. Sincere believers in
Christianity may derive profit from the scientific truths elicited
by these enquiries; but the enquiries themselves presuppose
a period of thought hostile, or at least indifierent, to Chris-
tianity. And we know from history that such was actually the
case. The English and French Deists of the last century, the
learned and philosophical Jews, who at this day speak with
admiration of the person of our Lord and of the moral and
social benefits which Christianity has conferred upon the world,
may be considered Christian believers, if we give that name to
all those eminent scholars who have contributed to make bibli-
cal science what it is. Biblical science, whatever may have
been its origin, owes its growth chiefly, not to Christian faith,
but to scepticism ; and this is one of the principal reasons why
it has been cultivated in Germany rather than in France or
Italy. Scepticism has flourished, and still flourishes, in Ca-
tholic as well as in Protestant countries ; but its direction in
the latter is naturally determined by the position which the
Bible is there supposed to occupy as the sole rule of faith.

In assigning to influences hostile to Christianity so large
a share in the growth of biblical science, we are, of course, very
far from implying that the science itself is unfavourable to
Christianity. This is altogether another question. The philo-
sophy of St. Thomas and other great thinkers of the Middle

' "Zwar unraittelbar hatte die Reformation keinen giinstigen Einfluss auf
die Entwickelung dieser Wissenschaft, allein die manchfaltige Anregung geisti-
ger Thatigkeit auf dem exegetischen und historischen Gebiete der Theologie,
welche durch sie vermittelt wurde, konute nicht ohne Riickwirkung auf die
Vorstellungen von der Bibelgeschichte bleiben. Doch waren es die Katholiken
welche, vielleieht durch das Dogma ihrer Kirche weniger gehindert, nicht nur
zuerst den bereits angehauften Stoflf zu sammeln und zu verarbeiten suchten,
sondem auch frilher als die Protestanten zu Methoden und Resultaten ge-
langten, welche nochjetzt mit Nutzen befolgt und mit Anerkennung genannt
warden kiinnen. Spater erst, und wohl von griissern dogmatischen Hinder-
nissen beengt kameu die Protestanten an die lleihe." Kcuss, Geachichte der
/leiligen Schriften Neuen Testaments, p. 8.

Dr, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Q^iy

Ages originated in speculations of tlie most decidedly anti-
Christian character. The destructive criticism of some biblical
scholars has provoked solutions of a conservative character ;
and these have in their turn been subjected to the ordeal of a
most searching verification. Is Christianity destined now, as
in the Middle Ages, to rise triumphantly above the perils of
scientific speculation ; or, in other words, is scientific specula-
tion itself likely to favour the Christian side of the controversy ?
The answer to this must entirely depend on what is meant by
Christianity. Biblical science stands in very difierent relations
to the difierent forms or systems of Christianity now existing.
One of these forms may, from its very nature, be entirely in-
dependent of the results of biblical science ; a second may be
modified in accidental, not in essential, details ; while a third
may be utterly shattered by them. A good Bible Dictionary,
such as that contemplated in the plan of Dr. Smith, would have
been of great value in helping to determine the relations be-
tween biblical science and the forms of Christianity flourish-
ing in this country. But we shall be disappointed if we have
recourse for this purpose to the Dictionary as actually exe-
cuted. Its professed aim is to meet the wants of those ''who
are anxious to study the Bible with the aid of the latest inves-
tigations of the best scholars." The aim is not accomplished.
The " investigations of the best scholars" are indeed mentioned,
often with the greatest disrespect; but they are rarely pre-
sented to the readers in the form most appropriate to them.

The defects of the work which particularly strike us, if not
numerous, are at least very great; and they run through its
most important articles. The essential characteristic of a good
dictionary is objectivity ; and to this quality all others should
be made subordinate. " II ne faut marquer que ce qui se sait,"
says Calmet in his preface, " et ce qui se pent donner pour cer-
tain." It is for facts, or for arguments equivalent to facts, that
we refer to a dictionary, not for eloquent writing, or expressions
of private opinion (particularly if this opinion be merel}^ secta-
rian), or ingenious speculations, upon which it is impossible to
rely. The writer of an article in it should say all that is neces-
sary for the elucidation of his subject ; he should say it in as
few words as are compatible with clearness ; and he should say
nothing else. But the contributors to Dr. Smith's Dictionary
are often very far from telling us all that they ought to say.
Instead of a complete and accurate analysis of their subject,
they pick and choose the parts of it which suit them best ; and
they often tell us much more than is necessary, either by saying
what is not true, or what is doubtful, or by indulging in difiuse
writing and declamation, or by calling names and insinuating

626 Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible,

improper motives. From these defects, of course, many articles
are free. The writers do not in general run wantonly into temp-
tation ; but whenever they are exposed to it, they are sure to
yield. The articles are of very unequal value ; the most im-
portant subjects, as a rule, receiving the worst treatment.

Before proceeding to examine the more important articles,
it will be well to give some examples of the blemishes which
belong to the Dictionary as a whole.

Almost all the contributors to it are, we believe, members
of the Established Church. No one has a right to complain of
Anglican divines for expressing Anglican sentiments, when the
occasion seems to require it. But the strongest theological sen-
timents can always be expressed in civil language ; and if abuse
be excusable in the pulpit or in a pamphlet, it is at least insuf-
ferable in a scientific work of reference. A Dictionary should
deal with facts and arguments; and facts and arguments are
not to be disposed of by calling men "rationalists" and unbe-
lievers. Nothing is to be gained by talking of " Schwegler the
most reckless, and De Wette the most vacillating of modern
critics," or quoting Dean Alford on "the insanity of hyper-
criticism of Baur and Schwegler." Baur's criticism is else-
where described as " the caricature of captiousness ;" and Dr.
Thompson says "the authority of the books has been denied
from a wish to set aside their contents." Lord Arthur Hervey
would have conferred a real benefit on his readers if he had
produced successful arguments in behalf of the books of Chro-
nicles, instead of merely saying that Dahler, Keil, Movers,
and others have done so, and that " it had been clearly
shown that the attack [of De Wette and other German critics]
was grounded not upon any real mark of spuriousness in the
books themselves, but solely upon the desire of the cintics in
question to remove a witness whose evidence was fatal to their
favourite theory of the post-Babylonian origin of the books of
Moses." This is the way in which a certain number of the
contributors speak of men to whom thej^ are indebted for almost
all the learning displayed in their articles, and with whose works
it is impossible to be acquainted without seeing that their scep-
ticism was perfectly honest, and grounded on scientific difficul-
ties not less serious in their kind than those which would prevent
a chemist or a naturalist from accepting a popular hypothesis
on a scientific matter. If German Protestants are treated in
this way in spite of the gratitude due to them, we need not
expect that Catholics or Catholicism should be spoken of with
ordinary civility. The nick-names " Romanism," " Romanist,"
" Romish," which well-bred gentlemen would not think of using
in society where Catholics were present, are here used in what

Dr. Smith's Dictionary/ of the Bible. 627

professes to be a scientific Dictionary. And the " Church of
Eorae" and '' E,omanisin" are made to bear the whole responsi-
bility of things which are common to all Christians except Pro-
testants. The Invention of the Cross is asserted by the Greek
no less than by the Latin Fathers, and held by Abyssinian
Monophysites and Nestorian Asiatics, no less than by Roman or
Neapolitan Catholics ; yet Mr. F. W. Farrar writes, " It clearly
was to the interest of the Church of Home to maintain the belief,
and invent the story of its multiplication, because the sale of the
relics was extremely profitable/^ The most narrow-minded dis-
plays of anti" Catholic feeling are, however, to be found in the
articles of Mr. F. Meyrick, of which we shall speak later on.

' II ne faut marquer que ce qui est certain,^ is a golden rule
but little observed in Dr. Smith's Dictionary. Certainty is not to
be obtained on all points ; and where it is not, we must be con-
tent with the greatest amount of probability that can be found.
But if we were asked to point out the model of such an article as
ought on no account to be received into a Dictionary, we should
select Professor Plumptre's on "Urim and Thummim." The
subject is one of those about which, in consequence of their pro-
found obscurity, there are "quot capita tot sententiae." No real
light whatever is thrown upon it by Professor Plumptre. He
proposes, in place of the many guesses hitherto made on the
nature of the Urim and Thummim, to substitute some guesses
of his own. We pass over his remarks on the Thummim, " the
easier problem of the two," in which he has been anticipated by
'^ the most orthodox of German theologians," Hengstenberg.
Having identified the Thummim with a symbolic figure of
Truth, like "the Egyptian Thmei,'' "we may legitimately ask
w^hether there was any symbol of Light standing to the Urim
in the same relation as that in which the symbolic figure of
Truth stood to the Thummim. And the answer to that question
is as follows : On the breast of well-nigh every member of the
priestly caste of Egypt there hung a pectoral plate, correspond-
ing in position and in size to the choshen of the high-priest of
Israel. And in many of these we find, in the centre of the
pectorale, right over the heart of the priestly mummy, as the
Urim was to be ' on the heart' of Aaron, what was a well-known

symbol of Light The symbol in this case was the mystic

Scarabiaeus.'' We are aware that sufficient justice cannot be
done to Professor Plumptre's ingenious hypothesis, without
giving the entire chain of plausible reasonings by which it is
supported. But it is not the less true that if we break the
strongest of its links the whole chain disappears altogether.
And the strongest link is broken if the plain truth is told, that
the mystic Scarabaeus was placed as a talisman on the heart,

VOL. IV. 1 1

Dr, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible,

not of living priests, but of mummies, male and female. It was
not by any means confined to ''members of the priestly caste of
Egypt," but was prescribed apparently for all who cared to try
its efiicacy, not as an oracle in life, as the Urim of the hi^h-
priest, but as a protection in the world beyond the grave. The
mode of consulting the IJrim is conjecturally illustrated by re-
ference to the processes of h5rpnotism, as in " electro-biology,"
or the abstraction of the ofiSaXo'xIrv'x^LKol of the fourteenth cen-
tury ; it being open to us to believe that these processes "may,
in the less perfect stages of the spiritual history of mankind,
have helped instead of hindering." This article is longer than
any of those on the Gospels ; it has twice as many pages as that
on the gospel of St. John. The proper place for speculations of
this kind — and we are sorry to say that they are not confined to
the article of which we have been speaking — is not a Dictionary,
but the Transactions of a learned society.

Difiuseness in every form should have been banished from
the Dictionary ; the contributors should have studied brevity
and eschewed rhetoric. Wherever rhetoric is allowed in a
work of the kind, it is made to do duty instead of argument.
Some of the articles are of extravagant length. The informa-
tion contained in "Wilderness of the Wandering" is extremely
interesting; but if all the subjects had been treated in as copious
a style, not three but thirty volumes would have been necessary.
" Star of the Wise Men'' is a comparatively short article, but it
is lengthened out by such unnecessary embellishments as the
following :

" We shall now proceed to examine to wliat extent, or, as it will be
seen, to how slight an extent, the. December conjunction fulfils the con-
ditions of the narrative of St, Matthew. We can hardly avoid a feeling
of regret at the dissipation of so fascinating an illusion ; but we are in
quest of the truth rather than of a picture, however beautiful, (a) The
writer must confess himself profoundly ignorant of any system of astro-
logy ; but supposing that some system did exist," &c.

!N"o objection could be taken to this style in a dissertation, but
it is quite out of place in a work where economy of words is of
real scientific importance. The following is a specimen of the
style of the article Lazarus :

" It is well not to break in upon the silence which hangs over the

interval of that 'four days' sleep' (comp. Trench, Miracles^ 1. c.)

But this much at least must be borne in mind, in order that we may
understand what has yet to come, that the man who was thus recalled
as on eagle's wings from the kingdom of the grave (comp. the language
of the complaint of Hades in the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus,
Tischendorf, Evang. Apoc, p. 305) must have learnt ' what it is to die'

Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. 6^

(comp. a passage of great beauty in Tennyson's In 3femoriam, xxxi.
xxxii.). The soul that had looked with open gaze upon the things
behind the veil had passed through a discipline sufficient to burn out
all selfish love of the accidents of his outward life. There may have
been an inward resurrection parallel with the outward (comp. Olshausen
ad loc). What man had given over as impossible, had been shown in
a twofold sense to be possible with God."

The miscliief of admitting this sort of composition will, we hope,
be keenly felt when it is discovered that the argumentative part
of the article on the Pentateuch is very weak, and concludes
with a passage beginning as follows :

" But, in truth, the book [of Deuteronomy] speaks for itself. No
imitator could have written in such a strain. We scarcely need the
express testimony of the work to its own authorship ; but, having it,
we find all the internal evidence conspiring to show that it came from
Moses. Those magnificent discourses, the grand roll of which can be
heard and felt even in a translation, came from the heart and fresh from
the lips of Israel's lawgiver. They are the outpourings of a solicitude
which is nothing less than parental. It is the father uttering his dying-
advice to his children, no less than the prophet counselling and admon-
ishing his people. What book can vie with it, either in majesty or in
tenderness ? What words ever bore more surely the stamp of genuine-
ness ? ... .In spite, therefore, of the dogmatism of modern critics, we
declare unhesitatingly for the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy."

It is certainly much easier to declaim in this fashion than to
reply to De Wette in De Wette^s own style.

From these specimens of defects, which are too common
throughout the Dictionary, we proceed to a closer inspection of
some of the most important articles, and particularly those
belonging to the department of " Introduction.^^

The article '* Bible," by Professor Plumptre, of King's Col-
lege, London, is not very important, as the history of the
growth of the collections known as the Old and New Testa-
ment respectively is given under " Canon." The following
passage, however, betrays an extraordinary want either of
knowledge or of historical sense :

" The LXX. presents . . . some striking variations in point of ar-
rangement, as well as in relation to the names of books. Both in this
and in the insertion of the avTiKeyo^tva, which we now know as the
Apocrypha, among the other books, we trace the absence of that strong
reverence for the canon and its traditional order which distinguished
the Jews of Palestine."

The writer does not see that he is here taking for granted a
very important fact, which has never yet been proved, namely,
the existence of an authoritative canon or tradition anterior to
the arrangement of the Septuagint.

630 Dr, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible,

If we turn to Mr. Westcott's article on " the Canon of
Scripture," in tlie hope of finding evidence on the subject, we
shall be disappointed. The account there given of the Jewish
canon is extremely unsatisfactory. The writer allows that
before the exile only faint traces occur of the solemn preserva-
tion and use of sacred books, and that even after the Captivity
" the history of the canon, like all Jewish history up to the
date of the Maccabees, is wrapt in great obscurity. Faint tra-
ditions alone remain to interpret results which are found real-
ised when the darkness is first cleared away." But Mr. West-
cott is inclined to attach importance to the " popular belief"
which assigned to Ezra and the " great synagogue" the task of
collecting and promulgating the Scriptures. But this popular
belief cannot be shown to have been in existence till many
centuries after the death of Ezra, and the tradition about the
" great synagogue" is demonstrably unhistorical. It is fabulous
in its details, and involves incredible anachronisms. Ezra, the
contemporary of Artaxerxes Longimanus, is made to preside
over an assembly of which Haggai and Zechariah, contempo-
raries of Darius Hystaspes, and Simon the Just, the contemporary
of Alexander the Great, were members. An attempt to extract
history out of such a tradition is not less hopeless than if we
had to deal with the story of Eomulus. The following are
Mr. Westcott's not very critical remarks upon it :

" Doubts have been thrown upon the beHef {Eau de Synag. magndj
1726 ; comp. Ewald, Ge^ch. d. V. Isr. iv. 191), and it is difficult to
answer them, from the scantiness of the evidence of the books them-
selves ; but the belief is in every way consistent with the history of
Judaism and with the internal evidence of the books themselves. The
later embellishments of the tradition, w^hich represent Ezra as the
second author of all the books [2 Esdras], or defines more exactly the
nature of his work, can only be accepted as signs of the universal belief
in his labours, and ought not to cast discredit upon the simple fact that
the foundation of the present canon is due to him. Nor can it be
supposed that the w^ork was completed at once, so that the account
(2 Mace. ii. 13) which assigns a collection of books to Nehemiah is not
described as initiatory or final. . The tradition omits all mention of the
law, which may be supposed to have assumed its final shape luider
Ezra, but says that Nehemiah ' gathered together the [writings] con-
cerning the kings and prophets, and the [writings] of David and letters
of kings concerning offerings,' while * founding a library.' "

We have no right to talk of the " later embellishments" of
a story when we meet them in the earliest form in which it has
been handed down to us. Again, if the story is to be admitted
at all, in any form, Mr. "Westcott's notion that the foundation
of the canon is to be attributed to Ezra, but that the work was

Dr, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. 631

not completed at once, must be given up. Tlie notion is not in
itself Lin improbable one ; but it is quite irreconcileable with the
Jewish tradition of " Ezra and the great synagogue" which was
invented for the purpose of accounting, among other things, for
the existence of the Jewish canon as a complete and final ar-
rangement. The passage quoted from the second book of Mac-
cabees, far from implying the formation or growth of a canon
of Scripture, would rather seem to prove that in the time of
Nehemiah the works which he mentioned were not yet con-
sidered parts of a sacred canon.

When was the Jewish canon closed, and what books did it
then contain ? Is there any proof that it was closed before the
Christian period ? In 1842 Movers published a short disserta-
tion, entitled Loci quidam historic^ canonis Veteris Testamenti
illustratiy in which it is maintained, with great learning and
ability, that the latter question must be answered in the nega-
tive. Some, indeed, of the views defended by Movers are very
paradoxical ; but the principal result of his enquiry has not been
overthrown. The latest researches tend to prove that the pre-
sent Hebrew canon is not of earlier date than the destruction of
Jerusalem, and that it is an anachronism to ascribe to the
Apostles and earliest Christians an idea of the Scripture which
only became authoritative among the Jews after the final rup-
ture between the Synagogue and the Church. Mr. Westcott
does not seem to be aware that so vital a question has been
seriously raised, and that the very position which he assumes
when collecting his evidence on the canon has thereby been
turned.

He considers the statement of the Talmud as in many
respects so remarkable that it must be transcribed entire. It
is as follows : " But who wrote the books of the Bible ? Moses
wrote his own book (?) , the Pentateuch, the section about Balaam,
and Job. Joshua wrote his own book, and the eight last verses
of the Pentateuch. Samuel wrote his own book, the Book of
Judges, and Euth. David wrote the Book of Psalms, of which,
however, some were composed by the ten venerable elders,
Adam the first man, Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, Haman,
Jeduthun, Asaph, and the three sons of Korah. Jeremiah
wrote his own book, the books of Kings and Lamentations.
Hezekiah and his friends [reduced to writing] the books con-
tained in the memorial word laMSCHaK, i. e. Isaiah, Proverbs,
Canticles, Ecclesiastes. The men of the great synagogue [re-
duced to writing] the books contained in the memorial letters
KaNDaGr, ^. e. Ezekiel, the twelve lesser prophets, Daniel, and
Esther. Ezra wrote his own book, and brought down the
genealogies of the books of the Chronicles to his own times. . . .

632 Dr. Smith* s Dictionary of the Bible,

Who brought the remainder of the books [of Chronicles] to a
close ? Nehemiah the son of Hachalijah.'' It ought surely to
be manifest to every scholar that this passage cannot be of the
smallest historical value. Some of the statements in it are pal-
pably absurd. Samuel could not have written " his book/' that
is, the book which bears his name. It records his death, and
the whole history of the reign of David. But Mr. Westcott
quietly says, " The details must be tested by other evidence ;
but the general description of the growth of the Jewish canon
bears every mark of probability." He cannot understand that
the passage is not evidence at alF; that when the details sug-
gested by the names of the books, and the details which " other
evidence" overthrows, are taken into consideration, the whole
has no more value as evidence than a similar statement made
by a Jew or Christian in the fifteenth or in the nineteenth
century.

It is not true, at least there is no evidence at all, " that at
the beginning of the Christian era the Jews had only one canon
of the sacred writings, defined distinctly in Palestine, and ad-
mitted, though with a less definite apprehension of its peculiar
characteristics, by the hellenising Jews of the dispersion, and
that this canon was recognised, as far as can be determined, by
our Lord and His Apostles." This error leads Mr. "Westcott
altogether astray, when he comes to speak of the Christian
canon.

" The history of the Old Testament canon among Christian writers
exhibits the natural issue of the currency of the LXX., enlarged as it
has been by apocryphal additions. In proportion as the Fathers were
more or less absolutely dependent on that version for their knowledge
of the Old Testament Scriptures, they gradually lost in common prac-
tice the sense of the difference between the books of the Hebrew canon
and the Apocrypha. The custom of individuals grew into the custom
of the Church ; and the public use of the Apocryphal books obliterated
in popular regard the characteristic marks of their origin and A'alue,
which could only be discovered by the scholar. But the custom of the
Church was not fixed in an absolute judgment. It might seem as if the
great leaders of the Christian- body shrank by a wise forethought from
a work for which they were unfitted ; for by acquirements and constitu-
tions they were little capable of solving a problem which must at last
depend on historical data. And this remark must be applied to the
details of patristic evidence on the contents of the canon. Their habit
must be distinguished from their judgment. The want of critical tact
which allowed them to use the most obviously pseudonymous works
(2 Esdras, Enoch) as genuine productions of their supposed authors, or
as * divine Scripture,' greatly diminishes the value of casual and iso-
lated testimonies to single books."

It is Mr. Westcott*s reverence, no doubt, for the Apostles

Dr, Smithes Dictionary of the Bible. 633

and other writers of the New Testament which leads him to
place implicit reliance on their critical judgment, and to throw
the responsibility for erroneous views of the canon upon " the
Fathers," who "gradually" lost the sense of a difference be-
tween the books of the Hebrew canon and the Apocrypha. The
gradual change of which he speaks is a fiction of which there
is no trace in history. The earliest Fathers do not exhibit a
greater consciousness of the difference between the Hebrew and
Greek texts of the Scripture than their successors. And if the
" critical tact" of some of the Fathers was so weak as to permit
their quoting the books of Enoch and 2 Esdras as genuine and
inspired works, what shall we say of St. Jude^s quotations from
the former of these books as from a genuine " prophecy" ? The
writers of the New Testament quote the Septuagint habitually ;
and it is really no unfair question to ask for proof that they
recognised the differences between it and the Hebrew text. It
is an unwarrantable assumption to take for granted that the
inhabitants of Palestine were in general familiar with the He-
brew Scriptures. To the great mass of the Jews of Palestine in
the time of our Lord the Hebrew Scriptures were practically
inaccessible. But a knowledge of the Greek language was as
common as that of Hebrew was rare ; and the Septuagint ver-
sion was current wherever the Greek language was spoken,
that is in all the great towns of Palestine. It may have been
held as an abomination by those zealots who execrated Greek
learning, arts, and philosophy, and even the use of the Greek
tongue ; but the time of their ascendancy in the Jewish Church
was not yet arrived. The New Testament writers do not merely
quote the Septuagint as a convenient version : their arguments
are built upon it even when it varies essentially from the He-
brew. If their quotations occasionally approach nearer in sense
to the Hebrew than our present text of the Septuagint, it is
unsafe to infer, as is constantly done, that they themselves cor-
rect the Septuagint by the Hebrew original. There were un-
doubtedly various readings of the Septuagint in the days of the
Apostles, as there were in the days of Origen. And it is not
improbable that copies current in Palestine were frequently
corrected from the Hebrew, just as copies of the old Latin ver-
sion of the Scriptures are found to have been corrected from the
Greek original.

The case of Josephus is very remarkable. What Mr. West-
cott says about him would lead one to conclude that he adhered
rigidly to the Hebrew Scriptures. Nothing can be further from
the truth. It has been proved by M. Eeuss that Josephus was to
all appearance unacquainted with the text of more than one of
the Old Testament writings. But we have only to turn to Lord

634 Dr. Smitlis Dictionarij of the Bible.

Arthur Hervey's article, "Book of Neliemiali/' for the assurance
that *' Josephus does not follow the authority of the book of Nehe-
miah/' '* As regards the appending the history in Neh. viii. to
the times of Ezra, we know that he was guided by the authority
of the apocryphal 1 Esdras, as he had been in the whole story of
Zerubbabel and Darius/' " There are," says the same writer in
a later article, *' two histories of Zerubbabel ; the one that is con-
tained in the canonical Scriptures, the other that in the apo-
cryphal books and Josephus." Is it not equally true, that the
only book of Ezra known to him is the apocryphal Esdras?
Let it be remembered that Josephus was no obscure Jew of
the dispersion, but a Jew born in Jerusalem, of the blood of the
Asmonaean princes, belonging to the first cf the twenty-four
courses of the priestly office ; and that he was a Pharisee, and
one of the most highly educated men of his nation : and we
shall see that it is an evident mistake to attribute to his con-
temporaries and fellow-countrymen in general such a loiow-
ledge of the Hebrew Scriptures as is often supposed, or that
strict adherence to them which in his day was probably con-
fined to the extreme zealots of the synagogue.

The ideas of these zealots became dominant in the syna-
gogue after the fall of Jerusalem. Greek ideas, Greek learning,
and the use of the Greek language for liturgical purposes, came
to be considered almost as tokens of apostasy ; and the existence
of the Septuagint, to which the Christians constantly appealed
in controversy, was looked upon as a calamity. Those portions
of the Talmud which represent the ideas of which we are speak-
ing, say that " darkness came upon the world for three days
when the Law was written in Greek." " It was a mournful day
for Israel, like that on which the calf was made." It was, no
doubt, at a time when ideas like these were dominant within
the synagogue that the Hebrew canon was finally closed ; and
it was not likely that men who could not tolerate the Pentateuch
in the Septuagint should recognise as Holy Scripture books
whose Hebrew original was lost, or which had never existed in
Hebrew ; some of them, like the book of Wisdom, even bearing
distinct marks of the hated *' Ionic science." This violent anti-
Hellenistic reaction was not confined in its effects to the Jews of
Palestine, but spread throughout the Jewish community. The
authority of the Septuagint was now repudiated ; and it is sig-
nificant of the times that in the second century three Greek
versions at least of the Old Testament were executed in oppo-
sition and contradiction to the Septuagint, and in close con-
formity with the Hebrew text. Besides the renowned versions
of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus, no less than three
others were discovered by Origen, all of them, it can hardly be

Dr, Smitlis Dictiorianj of the Bible. 635

doubted, works of Jewish translators. If it be true tliat Tbeo-
dotion and Symmaclius were Ebionites, it is clear that the re-
action was shared by those Christians who adhered to Judaism,
as far as it was possible to do so without denj'ing the Messianic
dignity of our Lord. But the feeling which seems to have pre-
vailed throughout the Jewish world in the second century was
utterly foreign to the writers of the New Testament and to the
early Christian Church. The Church had no reason whatever
for allowing herself to be guided by the decision of narrow-
minded Jews, more bigoted than those who had crucified our
Lord. She had long since been emancipated from the syna-
gogue ; and in determining the canon of the Old Testament she
had no other principle to follow than that by which she was
guided in determining a canon of the New, that is, her own
perception of the Word of God, which she recognised by virtue
of the Spirit of God abiding within her. What Calvin teaches
about the " interior witness" revealed to the individual believer
is what the Church has ever held as true with reference to the
body of believers. It is quite true, as Mr. Westcott says, that
the Christian canon of Scripture grew by use, not by enquiry.
"The canon of Scripture was fixed in ordinary practice, and
doubts were resolved by custom and not by criticism." No
amount of enquiry or criticism could have solved the question.
If the problem had been made to depend on historical data, a
canon of the New Testament would have been impossible. The
historical data of which he speaks never existed. The learned
Fathers of the Church who made enquiries about the Hebrew
canon seem never to have thought it requisite to pursue their
research beyond the question as to what books the Jews in their
own day held as canonical.

Mr. Westcott's selection of patristic evidence with reference
to the Christian canon of the Old Testament is not intentionally
unfair ; it is his method which leads him to attach undue im-
portance to a certain class of passages in the Fathers, in com-
parison with others. The " canon of Origen," for instance, as it
is called, has no right whatever to be placed in a list of "Christian
catalogues of the books of the Old Testament." It is not given
by Origen as a Christian catalogue, but expressly as one fcaO'
'E^paLov<;. All the deliberate judgments of Origen are opposed
to it. Mr. Westcott's note, though not sufficiently explicit,
may be considered as in some degree stating the evidence on
the second side of the question. But he gives only one side of
St. Jerome's evidence, and does not allow his readers to suspect
that there is another of no less importance. For a perfectly
impartial statement of the whole evidence, we refer them to
M. Reuss's recent work on the Canon. What renders Mr. West-

636 Dr. SmWs Dictionary of the Bible,

cott's unfairness the more striking is, that he takes great pains
to contrast with St. Augustine's acceptance of the Deutero- canon-
ical books all the isolated passages which seem to tell against
them.

Professor Plumptre's article, " Apocrypha," becomes of very-
little value as soon as the historical account of the use of the
word " apocryphal" is finished. The supposed characteristics of
the Apocr>^ha are given as if the writer were utterly unconscious
that the very same qualities or defects had long since been pre-
dicated of books belonging to the Hebrew canon. The absence
of the j)rophetic spirit can hardly be said to be peculiar to
Deutero- canonical books. And when the writer proceeds to
speak of want of originality, " repetition of the language of
older prophets," and the arbitrary combinations of dreams and
symbols, it is impossible not to confront him with his own
words on another occasion. In the article " Jeremiah" he says :

** Criticisms on the ' style' of a prophet are indeed, for the most part,
whether they take the form of praise or blame, wanting both in .rever-
ence and discernment. We do not gain much by knowing that to one
■writer he appears at once ' sermone quidem , . . quibusdam aliis pro-
phetis rusticior' (Hieron. Prcef. in Jerem.), and yet ' majestate sensuum
profundissimus' (Proem, in c. L.); . . . that bolder critics find in him a
great want of originality (Knobel, Prophetismus)', * symbolical images of
an inferior order, and symbolical actions unskilfully contrived' (Davidson,
Introd. to 0. T. c. xix.)."

Another supposed characteristic of the Apocrypha is the ten-
dency to pass ofi" supposititious books under the cover of illus-
trious names. *' The books of Esdras, the additions to Daniel,
the letters of Baruch and Jeremiah, and the Wisdom of Solomon,
are obviously of this character." That some of the Deutero-can-
onical books are pseudonymous is certain enough ; but are there
no pseudonymous books among the Hebrew Scriptures ? The
Canticles and Ecclesiastes, which bear the name of Solomon,
probably belong to the latest productions of Hebrew literature.
Professor Plumptre, in speaking of the Salomonic authorship of
Ecclesiastes, allows that inspired writers need not be supposed
to have been debarred from forms of composition which were
open to others.

*'ln the literature of every other nation the form of personated
authorship, where there is no animus decipiendi, has been recognised as
a legitimate channel for the expression of opinions, or the quasi-dra-
matic representations of character. Why should we venture on the
assertion that if adopted by the writers of the Old Testament it would
have made them guilty of a falsehood, and been inconsistent with their
inspiration ?"'

The historv of the sacred text itself is given in " Old Testa-

Dr, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, 637

ment" and "New Testament," which are, on the whole, respectable
articles ; the former by Dr. Thompson of New York, the latter
by Mr. Westcott. The section, however, by Dr. Thompson on
" Quotations from the Old Testament in the New Testament/'
might have been suppressed without any loss to the reader. It
is almost ludicrously superficial ; and much of it is certainly
erroneous. The old view that the New Testament writers cor-
rected the Septuagint version from the Hebrew when neces-
sary is given as if unquestionable ; and we are told that " when
the errors involved in the Septuagint version do not interfere
with the purpose which the New Testament writer had in view,
they are frequently allowed to remain in his quotation. '^ Yet
it is granted that " the current of apostolic thought too is fre-
quently dictated by words of the Septuagint which differ much
from the Hebrew .... or even an absolute interpolation of the
Septuagint is quoted^ Heb. i. 6 (Deut. xxxii. 43),^' expressly as
the word of God, it might have been added. Hengstenberg's
very insufficient explanation of the circumstance that in Matt.
xxvii. 9 Jeremiah is named as the author of a prophecy of
Zechariah, is given with applause. In the first and most im-
portant section of the article we do not see that, in speaking of
the Talmud, the writer gives an accurate idea of the value to be
attached to the quotations found in it from the Old Testament ;
and he is silent as to the difference in this regard between its
printed copies and the manuscripts of it.

" Samaritan Pentateuch^' is one of the uniformly excellent
articles of Mr. Emmanuel Deutsch, who has also written that on
the Samaritan version, and given some account of the Samaritan
literature. His articles on the Targums, in spite of the belief
expressed in the tradition of Ezra's connection with " that most
important religious and political body called the Great Syna-
gogue, or Men of the Great Assembly/' are among the most
valuable in the Dictionary.

When speaking, a few pages back, about the change of feel-
ing among the Jews towards the Septuagint, we should have been
glad to notice Dr. Selwyn's account of the matter ; but there is
none whatever in his article '* Septuagint," one of the most
superficial in the whole work. The dominant feeling in the
writer's mind appears to be the principle, which he prints in
italics, "never to build any argument on words or phrases of the
Septuagint without comparing them with the Hebrew" The
danger here deprecated is one to which Englishmen of the
nineteenth century are but little exposed. The author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews, on the contrary, never fails to violate
the principle of Dr. Selwyn ; a further index to whose mind
when writing this article may be found in the suggestion to

638 Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.

provide a new Greek version, "accurate and faithful to the
Hebrew original," — that is, we suppose, the Masoretic re-
cension— " for the use of the Greek Church, and of students
reading the Scriptures in that language for the purposes of
devotion and mental improvement."

" Yulgate," by Mr. Westcott, is an article ofa very different
order of merit, and, from the writer's point of view, could hardly
have been surpassed. It is full of information, and is in general
perfectly fair. He calls attention to the fact insisted upon by
Bellarmine and other great theologians, but strangely overlooked
in later controversies, that the decree of the Council of Trent
does not make any reference to the original text of the Bible,
but merely gives the preference to the Yulgate over other Latin
versions. In his account, however, of the Sixtine and Clemen-
tine editions of the Yulgate, Bellarmine's conduct is spoken of
with the most unjustifiable harshness. That great writer states,
in his preface to the Clementine edition, that Sixtus Y., having
perceived the number of clerical errors which had crept into the
Bible prepared b)^ him, decreed that the whole impression should
be recalled. " Of this," says Mr. Westcott, " there is not the
faintest shadow of proof." But surely the onus j^rohandi here
lies not upon Bellarmine, but upon those who deny his assertion.
That the numerous clerical errors of the Sixtine text were
recognised by the Pontiff himself is evident from the copies
which got into circulation ; they abound with corrections made
by the pen, or printed on slips of paper pasted over the errata.
But the words of Bellarmine's preface are interpreted by other
expressions of his found in his autobiography. Mr. Westcott
writes :

" On tlie accession of Gregory XIY. some went so far as to propose
that the edition of Sixtus should be absolutely prohibited ; but Bel-
larmine suggested a middle course. He proposed that the erroneous
alterations of the text which had been made in it (qvce male mutata
erant) should be corrected with all possible speed, and tlie Bible re-
printed under the name of Sixtus, with a prefatory note, to the effect
that errors {aliqua errata) had crept into the former edition by the
carelessness of the printers. This pious fraud, or rather daring false-
hood— for it can be called by no other name — found favour with those
in power."

When people talk so boldly about "daring falsehoods" they
should be very careful about the accuracy of their own state-
ments. Now the statement in Mr. Westcott's text is, as it
stands, calumnious. It implies that the word errata is con-
fined to printers' errors, whereas it was used by Bellarmine
and his contemporaries-^ in a sense including " quoo male rau-

2 Sixtus Senensis, for instance, in the last page of his Bibliothcca Sancta,

Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, 639

tata erant;" and Mr. Westcott translates " typographorum
\"EL ALiORUM incuria" ^^by the carelessness of the printers,"
thus leaving out words implying that others besides printers
were to blame. There can be no doubt that Bellarmine wished
to save the Pope's honour ; that he proposed to do this by
throwing the whole blame on the printers is untrue ; and his
preface to the Clementine edition, though speaking of the errors
of the press in the Sixtine, does not say that the new edition
was a mere corrected reproduction of its predecessor. The
revision of the text is simply avowed, and expressly said to
have been finished in the beginning of the pontificate of Cle-
ment YIII.

Other " Ancient Yersions" are described by Dr. Tregelles.
His articles are, in general, summaries of what he has elsewhere
written on the same subjects. His observations, however, on
the proposal by the late Canon Eogers for a new edition of the
Peschito, and those on a personal controversy between himself
and Mr. Scrivener, strike us as being singularly out of place in
Dr. Smith's Dictionary.

The insufficiency of the information given in Mr. Perowne's
articles on " Genesis," " Exodus," " Deuteronomy," and " Pen-
tateuch" is particularly remarkable at a moment when the
curiosity of the public has been awakened by the controversy
occasioned by the publication of Dr. Colenso's work. Mr.
Perowne's conclusions are in favour of what is called the
authenticity of the Pentateuch ; but they are not supported by
sufficiently strong arguments. And indeed it may be doubted
whether his admissions on the other side of the question are
not such as to outweigh the evidence on which he chiefly relies.
He produces certain references of time and place " which prove
clearly that the work, in its jjresent form, is later than the
time of Moses." The genealogical table of Esau^s family (Gen.
xxxvi.), for instance, contains the remark, "And these are the
kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned
any king over the children of Israel." On this Mr. Perowne
says : " No unprejudiced person can read the words . . . with-
out feeling that when they were written kings had already be-
gun to reign over Israel. It is a simple historical fact, that
for centuries after the death of Moses no attempt was made to
establish a monarchy amongst the Jews." He admits, moreover,
that the genealogical table in which the words occur could not
have been an interpolation ; " it is a most essential part of the

includes under the errata of the Vulgate " soloecismos, barbarisraos, hyperbata,
et raulta parum accommodate versa, et minus Latine expressa, obscure et am-
bigue interpretata, itemque nonnulla superaddita, aliaque omissa, quoedam
transposita, immutata, ac vitio scriptorum depravata."

640 Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible,

structure" of the book of Genesis. But ** this particular verse"
may be the interpolation of a later editor. There is in fact, he
thinks, abundant evidence to show that, though the main bulk
of the Pentateuch is Mosaic, certain detached portions of it are
of later growth. " It may have undergone many later revisions
and corrections, the last of these being certainly as late as the
time of Ezra." " The whole work did not finally assume its
present shape till its revision was undertaken by Ezra, after
the return from the Babylonish captivity.'^ We must once
more repeat, that there is no historical evidence that Ezra ever
revised the Pentateuch. All the supposed interpolations, cor-
rections, or glosses, that may be discovered in it, are the work
of men with reference to whom we know nothing. How large
a portion of the entire Pentateuch did they write ? What proof
is there that the " main bulk" of it is really Mosaic ? That it
was already in existence eight hundred years before Christ is
what no one doubts. Is there earlier evidence in its favour ?
The evidence '* lying outside of the Pentateuch itself" is di-
vided by ^Ir. Perowne into three kinds : " first, direct mention
of the work as already existing in the later books of the Bible ;
secondly, the existence of a book substantially the same as the
present Pentateuch amongst the Samaritans ; and lastly, allu-
sion less direct, such as historical references, quotations, and
the like, which presuppose its existence." The second kind
of evidence, derived from the Samaritan Pentateuch, is given
up by Mr. Perowne. The Samaritan Pentateuch contains
*' those passages which are manifestly interpolations and cor-
rections as late as the time of Ezra." " And we incline to the
view of Prideaux, . . . that the Samaritan Pentateuch was in
fact a transcript of Ezra^s revised copy." The third kind of
evidence, drawn from allusions, historical references, quota-
tions, and the like, begins with the prophets Joel, Amos, and
Hosea ; that is, not earlier than B.C. 800. The whole ancient
external evidence of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch
is therefore reduced to the first kind mentioned by Mr. Perowne.
In collecting this, he first refers to several passages of the book
of Joshua in which Moses is mentioned as the author of the book
of the law ; but he admits *' that they cannot be cited as prov-
ing that the Pentateuch in its present form and all its parts is
Mosaic.'' He might have added, that they rather add a diffi-
culty to all the rest. In one of the passages to which he refers it
is said that Joshua made a covenant with the people on the day
in which he took leave of the Israelites, " and set them a statute
and an ordinance in Shechem. And Joshua wrote these words
in the book of the law of God." Now, it is quite certain that
the book of the law of God here referred to does not mean our

Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, 641

present Pentateuch. " The book of Judges does not speak of
the book of the law/^ "It is a little remarkable, however,
that no direct mention of it occurs in the books of Samuel.
Considering the express provision made for a monarchy in
Deuteronomy, we should have expected that on the first ap-
pointment of a king some reference would have been made to
the requirements of the law. A prophet like Samuel, we might
have thought, could not fail to direct the attention of the newly
made king to the book in accordance with which he was to go-
vern. But if he did this, the history does not tell us so ; though,
there are, it is true, allusions which can only be interpreted on
the supposition that the law was known.^' Why are these not
specified ? " .The first mention of the law of Moses after the
establishment of the monarchy is in David's charge to his son
Solomon on his deathbed (1 Kings ii. 3)." " The words, *as it
is written in this law of Moses,' show that some portLon, at any
rate, of our present Pentateuch is referred to, and that the law
was received as the law of Moses !' It is impossible to prove
that any portion of the Pentateuch is referred to in the passage
quoted ; but even were the reverse of this true, we have come
down to writings which were not composed till the Babylonian
exile.

The chief argument, however, on which Mr. Perowne relies
is the express testimony of the book of Deuteronomy,* which
claims to be from the hand of Moses himself. He is mistaken,
we think, in saying that " all allow that the book of the cove-
nant in Exodus, perhaps a great part of Leviticus, and some
part of Numbers, were written by Israel's greatest leader and
prophet." It is a strange misapprehension of the controversy
to imagine that the genuineness of Deuteronomy is questioned
because it is in style and purpose so utterly uulike the genuine
wiHtings of Moses. The evidence to which Mr. Perowne appeals
in behalf of the antiquity of the book consists, first, in the allu-
sions to Egypt ; secondly, in the phraseology of the book and
the archaisms found in it, which " stamp it as of the same age
with the rest of the Pentateuch" (but he has not proved the
antiquity of the rest of the Pentateuch) ; thirdly, in the fond-
ness for the use of figures, some of which are peculiar to it, to
the " book of the Covenant,^^ and to Psalm xc, which is said to

^ Mr. Perowne grants that in the reign of Josiah the existence of Deutero-
nomy as a canonical book " seems to have been almost forgotten." We could
hardly have thought it possible to find the following note to his explanation on
the discovery of the book of the law: "That even in monasteries the Bible
■was a neglected and almost unknown book, is clear from the story of Luther's
conversion." If Mr. Perowne is not aware that he is here referring to a false-
hood long since exploded, let him read Maitland's Dark Ages, (p. 468 et seq.),
and blush at his own ignorance.

64-2 Dr, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible,

be Mosaic ; and fourthly, in the acquaintance of the prophets
\vith it. If all this evidence be put together and allowed to
pass unquestioned, which is more than any of Mr. Perowne's
opponents can be expected to consent to, it will not prove a
higher antiquity than the time of Samuel. He is therefore
obliged to have recourse to rhetoric, and concludes with the
passage which we have already quoted : *' But in truth the
book speaks for itself. No imitator could have written" — and
so forth.

The coexistence of the Elohistic and Jehovistic portions in
the Pentateuch is not in itself an argument against the Mosaic
authorship of the Pentateuch ; for Moses, as the Jehovistic com-
piler and editor, might have incorporated Elohistic documents
with his work. The argument, however, becomes a powerful
one when it is found that the Elohistic and Jehovistic docu-
ments continue to run through the book of Joshua ; but the
importance of this fact is ignored both by Mr. Perowne and by
Mr. Bullock, the writer of the short and meagre article " Book
of Joshua."

Many of the critical remarks of Mr. Twistleton on the
" Books of SamueP' are just and important ; but they rather
represent part of the scaffolding of an edifice, than the edifice
itself which ought to have been constructed.

Lord Arthur Hervey considers the Jewish tradition which
ascribes the first and second books of Kings to Jeremiah as
" borne out by the strongest internal evidence, in addition to
that of the language." These are, at all events, he believes,
the work of " a trustworthy historian, who cites contemporary
documents as his authority (let alone the peculiar character of
the Bible histories as * given by inspiration of God')." " It must,
however, be admitted that the chronological details expressly
given in the books of Kings form a remarkable contrast with
their striking historical accuracy." The very first date of a
decidedly chronological character which is given is manifestly
erroneous. Numerous other dates are also certainly wrong.
These chronological difficulties are of two kinds. One is the
mere want of the data necessary for chronological exactness ;
'* but the other kind of difficulty is of a totally different cha-
racter, and embraces dates which are vei^y exact in their mode
of expression, but are erroneous and contradictory." Such
difficulties Lord Arthur Hervey believes to be owing to the
interpolations of a professed chronologist, whose object was
to reduce Scripture history to an exact system of chronology.
The omission of some chronological passages in the Septuagint
would be a strong argument in favour of this hypothesis, were
it not that the Hebrew and Greek texts disagree in many im-

Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. 643

portant passages, wMcli our author enumerates and comments
upon in a spirit very unfavourable to the Septuagint. *' These
variations/^ he says, " illustrate a characteristic tendency of the
Jewish mind to make interesting portions of the Scriptures the
groundwork of separate religious tales, which they altered or
added to according to their fancy, without any regard to his-
tory or chronology/''

The articles on the books of Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah,
and Esther, are by the same writer, whose contributions to the
history of the Old Testament literature appear to improve pro-
gressively in alphabetical order.

When biblical critics assert the integrity of a book of Scrip-
ture, they mean that it is complete, and that all its parts are
written by one and the same writer, or at least put together by
him. Of all the prophetical books, that of Zechariah is, we
believe, the first that was questioned in this respect. But the
earliest doubts as to its integrity were not suggested by the
desire to impugn its divine authority, or to attack the inspira-
tion of Scripture. They were suggested by a motive of an
exactly opposite kind, namely, the wish to defend the accuracy
of a text in the New Testament. A remarkable passage from
the eleventh chapter of Zechariah is described in St. Matthew's
gospel " as spoken by the prophet Jeremias." There must, to
all appearance, be a mistake somewhere ; either the author of
the gospel is mistaken in ascribing the passage to Jeremiah, or
the passage and the whole context to which it belongs are
wrongly placed among the prophecies of Zechariah. St. Jerome,
St. Augustine, and most commentators after them, adopted the
first alternative. Mode first proposed the hypothesis, "that
the evangelist would inform us that those latter chapters,
ascribed to Zachary (namely, 9th, 10th, 11th, &c.), are indeed
the prophecies of Jeremy ; and that the Jews had not rightly
attributed them." "There is no Scripture saith they are Zach-
ary's ; but there is Scripture saith they are Jeremy's, — as this
of the evangelist. As for these being joined to the prophecies
of Zachary, that proves no more that they are his than the
like joining of Agar's proverbs to Solomon's proves that they
are therefore Solomon's, or that all the psalms are David's
because joined in one volume with David's psalms." He en-
deavoured to show that the historical standpoint of the author
of these chapters was utterly diiferent from, and inappropriate
to, that of Zechariah.'^ He was followed b}^ Hammond, Bishop
Kidder, and Newcome, Protestant archbishop of Armagh. The
last-named writer was chiefly led by the internal evidence of
a difierence of style and historical standpoint to maintain that

■' Mede's Works, Epist. xxxi. p. 786.
VOL. IV. U U

64A; Br, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.

the six last chapters could not have been written by Zechariah,
the son of Iddo. " They seem/^ he says, " to suit Hosea's age
and manner. But, whoever wrote them, their divine authority
is established by the two quotations from them in the New
Testament/'^

The integrity of the book of Zechariah is one of those ques-
tions which would naturally call forth all the learning and
ingenuity of the great German critics. The majority of them
are decidedly unfavourable to it. But the difficulties of the
subject are very great ; and De Wette, who denied the integrity
in the three first editions of his Introduction, finished by ad-
mitting the insufficiency of the arguments on that side of the
question.7 The arguments on both sides are very fairly given
by Mr. Perowne ; and we really cannot blame him for hesi-
tating to decide between them. "Indeed, it is not easy to
say," he concludes, " which way the weight of evidence pre-
ponderates."

A far more important question is that concerning the in-
tegrity of the book of Isaiah. The article " Isaiah" is one of
considerable extent, and, from its subject, ought to have been
one of the most important in the Dictionary. It has, however,
been written by a thoroughly incompetent person, who, instead
of mastering the difficulties of his subject, has produced a feeble
apology of the old view of the literary question. It is well
known that the overwhelming majority of eminent scholars are
of opinion that the second part of the prophecies (the last
twenty-seven chapters), attributed to Isaiah, are the work, not
of Isaiah, but of a later prophet. The list of these scholars is
admitted by Mr. Huxtable to be, in point of numbers, of cri-
tical ability, and of profound Hebrew scholarship, sufficiently
imposing. "Nevertheless," he says, "when we come to en-
quire into their grounds of objection, we soon cease to attach
much value to this formidable array of authorities." When
we, on the other hand, come to enquire into his mode of look-
ing at the matter, we see that, instead of asking himself what
truth may be beneath the mass of evidence which so many
learned men have collected, independently of the method ac-
cording to which each of them ma)'' have chosen to state it, he
has simply taken up a controversial position, and stated their
evidence in a form which, although unobjectionable from a

" Newcome, Minor Prophets^ p. 195.

' Mr. Perowne is hardly justified in saying that "when De Wette, after
having adopted the theory of different authors, felt himself obliged to abandon
it ... . and to vindicate the integrity of the book, the ground for a post-exile
date must be very strong." The ground for a post-exile date ks- very strong ;
but De Wette did not exactly vindicate the integrity of the book. He merely
allowed its possibility.

Br, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. 6if5

" Rationalist" point of view, and therefore adopted by some
of the critics in question, cannot but appear extremely weak
to English, and particularly to orthodox Protestant, minds.
This is not unfair in one controversialist arguing against
another ; but a critic is bound to rise above the ai^giimentum ad
hominem. His position is that, not of an advocate, but of a
judge. Mr. Huxtable altogether misapprehends the literary
question at issue. One of his arguments is drawn from the
predictions contained in the second book as to the character,
sufferings, death, and glorification of Jesus Christ. "A be-
liever in Christ,'' he says, " cannot fail to regard those predic-
tions as affixing to this second part the broad seal of divine in-
spiration, tuhereby the chief ground of objection against its having
been written by Isaiah is at once annihilated." The question is
utterly independent of that of inspiration. The high Anglican
authorities who doubted or denied the integrity of the book
of Zechariah never dreamed of questioning the inspiration of
the second prophet, whose writings they believed to have been
added to those of Zechariah. iTsTo one denies that the author of
the second part of the book attributed to Isaiah is as true and
inspired a prophet as any whose names we know. And it
would be well if, in examining a question like that of the in-
tegrity of the book of Isaiah, orthodox critics could forget for
the time that the evidence on the subject was first put toge-
ther by men less orthodox than themselves. It can hardly be
doubted that, if philological and critical science had been cul-
tivated in Catholic Italy and Spain with as much activity and
success as in Protestant Germany, Italian and Spanish critics
would, without sacrificing a particle of their orthodoxy, have
arrived at the same conclusions on the literary character of the
book of Isaiah as Eichhorn, De Wette, Gesenius, and Ewald.

Mr. Huxtable has stated the evidence as seen from one point
of view ; we will venture to look at it from another.

As long as the book of Isaiah was studied in a translation,
it matters not whether Greek, Latin, German, or English, it
was impossible that the reader should notice the very remark-
able fact, that after the thirty-ninth chapter the language and
style are completely changed. There may be nothing very ex-
traordinary in the sudden transition from Hebrew to Chaldee
in the books of Ezra and Daniel. The change of language in
the book of Isaiah is of a totally different character. It is hardly
perceptible to the superficial reader ; and yet it tells a tale not
less historically certain than that which enables us to account
for the appearance of two different Semitic dialects in the same
book. Although written in classical Hebrew, the second part of
the book of Isaiah is full of linguistic peculiarities not found in

646 Dr. SmitJi's Dictionary of the Bible.

the first part, and of others betraying an age of the language
later than that of Isaiah.

"To [these] peculiarities/' says Knobel, "belong ntt|", to
sprout, i.e. to arise; Snp^ to j^reac/i; nan n29, to break out
into exultation; Q^tt?, n^tt^n, nb^, nbb:?nS":T; V:B'0i:^, the religion
of Jehovah; p"!"^,, prosperity, salvation; Tl\yi'2jt/ie same; Ci^n,
the inhabitants of the earth; T^?, ^-r^?* ^^ nothing ; "nbsi'bs,
all flesh ; *^5^t "^^'^ wasting and destruction; the use of the ad-
jective and participle as a substantive neuter^ mostly in the
plural feminine, ex. gr. ni^Db^f:, ancient things ; rii^trS";,
former things ; rilS'^, great things ; ri1"i^5, secret things ;
n'ltLnn, new things; nvins^ things to come; rilW2, the same.
These expressions appear, for the most part, in our author, and
characterise him as a very peculiar writer. Most important are
the linguistic elements, betraying a later time. The writer uses
a number of expressions which are found either in his composi-
tion only, or in the later books ; and Avhich must be explained
chiefly by the Aramaean, ex. gr. bw|, to be unclean; tt't?2, to
grope ; nSD, to span ; 7133, to name ; Wn^, to strike ; nHD, to
spread out ; "T^O^ ^^ pray to ; pj?3, to kindle ; QK73, to breathe ;
n:^3, to cry) n]^, the same ; n3j:j, to bow, stretch ; l?'n, repent-
ance; "1^"!?,' idol; n7|i:g, veil; ti??"!, dirt; nnit!?, apostate; "I'^Ppn,
without ; U^y^, to be averse ; the formulas, luhat dost thou ; peo-
ples and tongues : C^??P, princes, is a Persian word. In like
manner, our author employs a number of words in significations
and relations borrowed in part from Aramaean, appearing only
in later authors, so far as they are not peculiar to him, and all
betraying a great advance in the language, thus showing a later
period; as, "^^wn, to kindle" [and many others]. "The same
holds good of word-forms, ex. gr. the Aramaeisms, "'ribsi;is and
"^^nn . None but the author has a Pihel of "^SS, a Hiphil de-
nominative of n5, a Hithpael of n^^, r\r\B, and T^vy^, as well as
the nominal forms nhbDi;? in the plural, T\b\V for nbn:, nn^.37^^,
nnn^.73, TMT^y^j and nt^S^n. Other words he has in common
with the later writers, ex. gr. the Pahal of ^"^17 and the Pilel of
mb, as also \nis for ^ns, TTP2 for r[y^r^, ^"Iji^, and the plurals
nii^nn, n\nitt, Q^pbiy. Many words are to be explained by
the Arabic, which may have had an influence on the Hebrew of
the exiles in the intercourse of the Arabians with the Babylo-
nians; for example, l^^b?, unfruitful [and ten others].''

To these peculiarities of language we must add very remark-
able peculiarities of style, for which we refer to the work from
which the foregoing extract is taken, or to any good work of
the same kind.

If we now compare the prophecies contained in the second

Dr, SmitKs Dictionary of the Bible, 647

part with those contained in tlie first, the difference of historical
standpoint will be found to be very great. The writer of the
first part in one place predicts the exile ; but his prophecies are
clearly written in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah,
and Manasseh. The writer of the second part does not predict
the exile; he every where speaks as if he were living in it.
Those to whom he speaks, to whom he declares himself to be
sent, are in exile and oppressed. The destruction of the temple
and of Jerusalem itself are spoken of not as future, but as past,
events. It is predicted not that the cities of Judah shall be
destroyed, but that they shall be rebuilt. There is not a single
phrase in these twenty-seven chapters indicating that the writer
lived before the time of Cyrus, whose name is repeatedly men-
tioned in them. And it has been truly remarked that were this
portion of the book of Isaiah separate from the other, and with-
out a name, no one would think of ascribing to it another date
than that suggested by the name of Cyrus and the rebuilding
of the temple,^ more than a hundred and fifty years after the
time of Isaiah.

The philological evidence, therefore, for the later date of the
second part is in perfect harmony with the evidence derived
from the contents of this part. The language betrays a writer
of an age subsequent to that of Isaiah, and influences which are
accounted for by the very historical data furnished by the mat-
ter of the prophecies.

There is no ancient external evidence whatever for the unity
of the book of Isaiah. There are only dogmatic reasons of a
very insufiicient kind. The '^inspired testimony of the New
Testament," to which Mr. Huxtable appeals, does not delibe-
rately pronounce upon the question. In St. Luke's gospel^
we are told that there was delivered to our Lord the "book
of the prophet Esaias.'' And it was from this book that
our Lord read the words, '*The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me," &c. But no one questions the fact, that in our Lord's days
the " book of the prophet Esaias" contained the passage quoted
in St. Luke's gospel. Other passages of the New Testament, in
which " Esaias" is quoted as the source of predictions found in
the second part of the book ascribed to him, are to be explained
in the same way as the passage in St. Matthew ascribing to
Jeremiah a prophecy which is most probably not by him, or as
the passage of St. Jude which quotes the book of Enoch as a
genuine prophecy.

^ It is to be observed that Zechariah (viii. 7) apparently quotes Isaiah
xliii. 5, as spoken by the mouth of one of the prophets who were " in the day
that the foundation of the house of the Lord of Hosts was laid, that the temple
might be built."

5 iv. 17.

648 Dr, SmitKs Dictionary of the Bible,

It is almost incredible that Mr. Huxtable sbould appeal to
" the unity of design and construction which," as he endeavours
to show, "connects these last twenty-seven chapters with the
preceding parts of the book,^^ and to "the oneness of diction
which pervades the book." This latter kind of internal evidence
is surely only visible in a translation. . " The peculiar elevation
and grandeur of style" is certainly not less remarkable in the
second than in the first part ; but it is in itself no evidence at
all. " The absence of any other name than Isaiah's claiming
the authorship" is a very poor reason for assigning it to Isaiah.
What would Mr. Huxtable say of such a reason given for the
genuineness of the Clementines, or of the writings attributed to
St. Dionysius the Areopagite ?

Another argument is drawn from "the claims which the
writer makes to the/o?^ekiiowledge of the deliverance by Gyrus ;
which claims, on the opposing view, must be regarded as a
fraudulent personation of an earlier writer." A certain number
of references are given in another part of Mr. Huxtable 's article
as bearing on these supposed claims ; and a note assures us that
"it is difficult to acquit the passages above cited of impudent,
and indeed suicidal, mendacity, if they were not written before
Cyrus appeared on the political scene." We have read with
great attention all the passages referred to ; and if the book
were not a very short one, we might be afraid that we had been
misled by clerical errors ; but neither in these passages, nor in
any others in the second part of Isaiah, can we discern a trace of
the claims supposed to be made by the prophet to a/oreknow-
ledge of the deliverance by Cyrus, except such foreknowledge
as belongs to a contemporary. In most of the passages referred
to by Mr. Huxtable the foreknowledge of God is spoken of ; in
no case that of Isaiah, or of a prophet living a century and a
half before the appearance of Cyrus, or even twenty years before
that time.

It is hardly necessary to say that on other difficulties and
interesting questions connected with the book of Isaiah — such,
for instance, as that of the " Servant of the Lord" — not a single
ray of light is shed by Mr. Huxtable's article.

On the prophet Jeremiah, Professor Plumptre's article con-
tains a great deal that every student can find for himself in his
own Bible ; but the important subject of the text of the book
is dismissed with half a page. The discrepancies between the
Hebrew text and that of the Septuagint are extremely remark-
able and instructive. Professor Plumptre merely gives a short
table indicating the extent of the divergency ; and " for fuller
details, tending to a conclusion unfavourable to the trustworthi-
ness of the Greek translation," he refers to Keil s EMeitung,

J

Z)r. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, 649

" and the authors there referred to.^^ We are next presented
with a table of references to *' supposed interpolations," con-
cluding with a list of the chief impugners and defenders of the
authenticity of the passages in question. This is certainly a
very summary way of disposing of difficulties.

The difficulties of the book of Daniel begin with the very
first verse of the first chapter, which states that in the third
year of Jehoiakim king of Judah, jS^ebuchadnezzar king of
Babylon came and besieged Jerusalem ; whereas Jeremiah iden-
tifies the first year of Nebuchadnezzar with the fourth of Je-
hoiakim, in which year he himself predicted the coming of the
Babylonish king and the captivity of Judah. The true expla-
nation of this difficulty, according to Mr. Westcott, is suggested
by the text of Daniel. " The second year of Nebuchadnezzar's
reign (ii. 1) falls after the completion of the three years' train-
ing of Daniel, which commenced with his captivity (i. 1, 5) ;
and this is a clear indication that the expedition mentioned in
i. 1 was undertaken in the last year of the reign of Nabupa-
lassar, while as yet Nebuchadnezzar was not properly king."
This explanation of one difficulty by the discovery of a second,
which leads to giving up the historical accuracy of the passage
explained, and that in a way which evidently contradicts the
intention of one's author, is far from satisfactory. "But some
further difficulties remain," continues Mr. Westcott, " which
appear, however, to have been satisfactorily removed by Nie-
buhr (Gesch. Assiirs, 86 &.)." One of these satisfactory
explanations seems to be that when Jeremiah ^^ predicted
the coming of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had already
come.

We certainly did not expect to find in Mr. Westcott^s
articles a solution of the difficulties of the book of Daniel ; and
we have therefore not been disappointed. The doubts as to the
genuineness of the book are disposed of in not quite a column
of general views as to the providential government of the world,
together with about the same amount of reply to objections in
detail. The whole tone of this criticism is so conservative as
logically to be available for the defence of other books with
which that of Daniel has much in common. But as these books
are not in the Hebrew canon, we must expect quite a different
treatment for them.

The great fabulist La Fontaine one day accidentally made
acquaintance with the book of Baruch, and was so struck with
its beauty that he went about asking all his friends, "Connaissez-
vous Baruch ?" and recommending them to read it. We fear
that Baruch is little known to the readers of Dr. Smith's Dic-

'° Chap. XXV.

650 Dr. Smithes Dictionary of the Bible,

tionary, and that they will pass over, without any misgivings,
an important misstatement of Mr. Westcott's as to the imita-
tion of Daniel by the author of the book. There are certainly
very close and unmistakeable coincidences between the books
of Daniel and Baruch ; but in our opinion, which is that also of
great critics^ ^ who are not remarkable for prejudices in favour of
the deutero-canonical books, it is the author of Daniel who
has imitated the book of Earuch. If this be the true state of
the case, Mr. Westcott has the alternative of giving the book
of Baruch a date anterior to that of the prophet Daniel, or of
bringing down the date of the book of Daniel to a time pos-
terior to that to which he assigns the book of Baruch.

Other deutero-canonical books (Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom of
Solomon, Maccabees, and Tobit) are not treated by Mr. West-
cott as they would have been were they recognised by his
Church as canonical; but he certainly deserves the praise of
having displayed in regard to them an amount of fairness and
good sense which has been lamentably rare among English Pro-
testant writers. A better and more rational feeling than had
hitherto prevailed towards the "Apocryphal" books was first
inaugurated by Dr. Davidson, whose chapter on this subject in
the last edition of Home's Introduction offers a very striking
contrast to the corresponding chapter in the earlier editions.

A fair amount of Greek scholarship being nearly as com-
mon among the more highly educated Anglican clergy as a
knowledge of Hebrew is rare, it might have been expected that
the excellence of articles on the books of the New Testament
would compensate for the poverty of those on the Old. But
this is far from being the case ; the jSIew Testament articles are
in general inferior to the Old Testament ones, the difficulties of
the latter having apparently enforced a greater amount of care-
ful study both of the original documents and of tlie erudite
German works to which the writers of the Dictionary are so
much indebted.

The article " Gospels,'^ by the Archbishop of York, might,
if we except a few allusions and bibliographical references to
modern books, have been written more than thirty years ago.
He tells us that " Barnabas, Clemens Romanus, and Polycarp,
quote passages from [the gospels], but not with verbal exact-
ness. The testimony of Justin Martyr (born about a.d. 99,

" "Las der Verfasser des B. Daniel gewiss schon dies Buch und zwar he-
braisch, auch wohl in derselben Verbindung mit dem B. Jercmja: denn die
Worter des Gebetes Dan, ix. 4 19 geben sich ihrem Hauptinhalte iiach nur als
cine neue Ausarbeitung nach Bar. i. 15 — ii. 17, auch meist als Verkiirzung dar-
aus ; und wahrend dies Gebet im B. Daniel mehr nur eine Nebensache ist um
auf etwas -wichtigeres hiniiberzuleiten, ist es im B. Barukh ebon die Hauptsache
fursich.'* Ewald, Gesch, d, V. Israel, B. iv. p. 232.

Dr, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. 651

martyred a.d. 165) Is mucli fuller ; many of his quotations are
found verbatim in the gospels of St. Matthew, St. Luke, and
St. John, and possibly of St. Mark also, whose words it is more
difficult to separate.^' After all that has been written on the
testimony of Justin, and, indeed, of the ancients generally, one
could hardly have been prepared for such smooth sailing. The
assertion, too, that from the first " a sharp line of distinction
was drawn between [the four gospels] and the so-called apo-
cryphal gospels, of which the number was \qtj great," may be
true ; but when Dr. Thompson appeals to historical evidence in
support of it, he should tell us in what this evidence consists.
He ought to remember that it is generally admitted that Ig-
natius, Justin, and the author of the second epistle attributed
to Clement of Eome, unhesitatingly quote apocryphal gospels,
and that no testimony equally clear, and of equal antiquity,
has yet been produced for the gospel of St. John.

A short account of the difi'erent explanations first given of
the close resemblances to be found in the synoptical gospels,
and of the theory of an original gospel, is closed by a protest
against this theory as inconsistent with inspiration and with
" the wholesome confidence with which we now rely on the
gospels as pure, true, and genuine histories of the life of Jesus,
composed by four independent witnesses inspired for that
work." Gieseler's hypothesis, that the oral teaching of the
apostles was the real source of the agreement between the
three gospels, meets with more favour; and Dr. Thompson
proceeds to enquire how it bears upon our belief in the inspira-
tion of the gospels — a momentous question, which admits, he
believes, of a satisfactory reply. Divine guidance and the
Spirit of Truth were promised to the apostles by our Lord ; and
that this promise was fully realised to them, the history of the
Acts sufficiently shows. " So that as to St. Matthew and St.
John, we may say that their gospels are inspired because the
writers of them were inspired according to their Master's
promise," supernatural guidance being as necessary in writing
a gospel as when standing before a human tribunal. *' The case
of the other two Evangelists is somewJiat different. It has al-
ways been held that they were under the guidance of apostles
in what they wrote,— St. Mark under that of St. Peter, and St.
Luke under that of St. Paul.'' "As St. Mark and St. Luke
were the companions of apostles, — shared their dangers, con-
fronted hostile tribunals, had to teach and preach, — there is
reason to think that they equally enjoyed what they equally
needed." The portion of the three first gospels which is com-
mon to all, being derived from the teaching of the apostles in
general, is drawn directly from an inspired source, and each

692 Dr, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible,

gospel has its own features, the divine element having con-
trolled the human but not destroyed it.

" There is a perverted form," contiQues Dr. Thompson, " of
the theory we are considering, which pretends that the facts of
the Redeemer's life remained in the state of an oral tradition
till the latter part of the second century, and that the four
gospels were not written till that time.'' The difference is not
of degree," he says, "between the opinion that the gospels
were written during the lifetime of the apostles, who were
eye-witnesses, and the notion that for nearly a century after
the oldest of them had passed to his rest, the events were only
preserved in the changeable and insecure form of an oral
account. But for the latter opinion there is not one sparh of
historical evidence.'^ There is certainly none. But if, instead
of taking the most exaggerated form in which the hypothesis
he supports has been "perverted," we substitute for "the latter
part of the second century" " a hundred years after the death
of Christ," will Dr. Thompson tell us that the " sparks" of evi-
dence are much more numerous and bright on his side of the
question than on the other ? If so, where are they ?

We shall look in vain for them in the articles on the gospels
of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. St. Matthew's gospel is said to
be quoted by Justin Martyr and Hegesippus. We know from
Eusebius that Hegesippus used the " gospel according to the
Hebrews ;" but this was not St. Matthew. Dr. Thompson al-
lows that " the citations of Justin Martyr, very important for
this subject, have been thought to indicate a source different
from the gospels which we now possess ;" but he has no space
to show that the dTrofjLVTjfMovev/jiaTa of Justin were the gospels ;
and that though "Justin quotes the gospels very loosely, so
that his words often bear but a slight resemblance to the original,
the same is true of his quotations from the Septuagint." We
are referred for the disposal of this question to Norton's Genu-
ineness, vol. i., and Hug's Einleitung. It is scarcely necessary
to say that both these books, the latter of which was most admir-
able at the time when it was written, are quite inadequate to
the wants of the present day.

"Owing to the very few sections peculiar to Mark," it is
said in the article on that gospel, "evidence from patristic
quotation is somewhat difficult to produce. Justin Martyr,
however, quotes ch. ix. 44, 46, 48, xii. 30, and iii. 17 ; and
Irenffius cites both the opening and closing words (iii. 10, 6)."
Here again we have to bear in mind that all the supposed quo-
tations from the gospels in Justin are, to say the least, very
doubtful.

Of St. Luke's gospel Dr. Thompson says that " it is quoted

Dr. Smithes Dictionary of the Bible. 653

by Justin Martyr, and by tbe author of tbe Clementine
Homilies. The silence of the apostolic fathers only indicates
that it was admitted into the canon somewhat late, which was
probably the case. The result of the Marcion controversy is,
as we have seen, that our gospel was in use before a.d. 120."
The mention of the canon leads us to enquire by whom Dr.
Thompson thinks that of the New Testament was drawn up.
He objects^^ to Eichhorn's notion that the " Church'^ sanctioned
the four canonical books, and by its authority gave them ex-
clusive currency, because " there existed at that time no means
for convening a council ;" and yet he implies that the canon of
the l^ew Testament, even as regarding the gospels, was not
drawn up till after the date of the writings attributed to the
apostolical fathers.

If it be important to prove by convincing evidence that the
gospels were written by contemporaries and eye-witnesses of
the events which they record, and if this can be done in a way
which ought to be satisfactory to all fair judges of literary
history, Dr. Thompson cannot lay any claim to the credit of
such a success. And his account of the questions raised with
reference to the contents and purpose of each of the synoptical
gospels is as unsatisfactory as his proofs of their apostolical
antiquity.

The gospel of St. John deserved an article at least of the
same importance as " Isaiah." That by Mr. Bullock is very
short and insignificant. It simply ignores all the great ques-
tions to which the gospel has given rise. The same thing is
true of Dean Alford's article, " Acts of the Apostles."

The articles on the epistles of St. Paul are often dull, and
always unimportant. The speculations of the Tubingen school,
"vyhich have furnished so many suggestions even to its theolo-
gical and literary opponents in Germany, are only referred to
occasionally for the purpose of refutation. De Wette, Neander,
Hase, Reuss, Bleek, and even Thiersch and the Catholic Lutter-
beck, have better understood how to profit by the critical en-
quiries which are treated with such contempt by some of the
writers of the Dictionary.

The writer of the article "Epistle to the Hebrews," who
says that the tendency of opinion in Germany is to ascribe the
epistle to some other author than St. Paul, does not seem to be
aware that, besides the difierence of style and mode of reasoning
between it and the acknowledged writings of St. Paul, a difier-
ence of doctrinal system is strongly asserted to exist. It is only
Luther whom Mr. Bullock mentions as " unable to perceive its
agreement with St. Paul's doctrine." Another objection — which,

1' Vol. ii. p. 277.

654? Dr, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.

as we should put it, is that it quotes a different text^^ of the
Septuagint from that generally quoted by St. Paul — is thus
alluded to: *' If St. Paul quotes to the Hebrews the LXX.
without correcting it where it differs from the Hebrew, this
agrees with his practice in other epistles, and with the fact
that, as elsewhere, so in Jerusalem, Hebrew was a dead lan-
guage, acquired only by much pains by the learned/'

Mr. F. C. Cook, in the article '* Peter,'' calls attention to
the fact that the apostle " seems to have conversed fluently in
Greek with Cornelius, — at least there is no intimation that an
interpreter was employed, — while it is highly improbable that
Cornelius, a Eoman soldier, should have used the language of
Palestine." He says also that " the style of both of St. Peter's
epistles indicates a considerable knowledge of Greek ; it is pure
and accurate, and in grammatical structure equal to that of
St. Paul." This, however, he thinks, may possibly be due to
the employment of an interpreter ; a hypothesis which would
explain the difference of style between the two epistles, for that
the two " coidd not have been composed and written by the
same person is a point scarcely open to doubt." But when he
says that *' there are no traces of Greek literature upon [St.
Peter's] mind, such as we find in St. Paul, nor could we expect
it in a person of his station, even had Greek been his mother
tongue," he is not aware that the second epistle attributed to
St. Peter is more full, perhaps, than all those of St. Paul put
together of passages closely akia in thought to aphorisms of
Greek, and particularly Philonic, philosophy.^*

Of Mr. Meyrick's contributions to the Dictionary, and among
them some articles upon the epistles of St. James and St. John,
we shall have occasion to speak later on. Mr. Bullock's article,
" Revelation of St. John," does not rise above the moderate level
we are accustomed to in English books on the subject.

" Introduction" is decidedly one of the weak departments of
the Dictionarj^ although the articles belonging to it are put
forward in the editor's preface as " naturally some of the most
important in the work." A deplorable mediocrity in all that
regards learning and thought characterises most of them. This
is particularly true of the articles on the books of the New Tes-
tament. But with the exception, perhaps, of what Mr. West-
cott writes on parts of the ''Apocrypha," the articles both on
Old and New Testament books are all utterly unworthy to be
compared with the corresponding ones in the ordinary German
works on " Introduction." From some of our remarks it may
perhaps be thought that we chiefly object to the apologetic and

'» A reading of Deut xxxii. 35 differing from the Hebrew and common
Septuagint texts is, however, quoted both in Rom. xii.JO and Heb. x. 30.
'* See Schwegler, Das nachapostoUschc Zeilalter, i. 515.

Dr. Smithes Dictionary of the Bible, Q55

conservative spirit which prevails throughout these articles.
We certainly do think that in a work of the kind objectivity is
what should chiefly be aimed at. But we do not find fault with
any amount of conservatism which is consistent with objective
truth. It is not with the conclusions considered in themselves
that we quarrel, but with the facts and arguments by which
they are supported. The interests of the most conservative
theology are here in fact identical with those of critical science.
It is not for the benefit of religion that all the positions taken
up by its defenders should be evidently such as may be under-
mined, turned, or carried by assault.

The apologetic interest, to which a part at least of the de-
fects of the articles about which we have been speaking is due,
is necessarily less prominent in the purely biographical and
historical articles. Many of these are admirably written. It
is not often that contributions to a Dictionary possess the pic-
turesque beauty of such articles as " Moses," " Samuel,'' " Saul,''
** David," " Jonathan," *' Jeroboam," and some others by Dr.
Stanley. There is an exquisite charm about them, which ought
not, however, to blind one to their defects. Dr. Stanley is too
apt to fill up the gaps of the Hebrew narrative with doubtful
details from the Septuagint or Josephus ; perhaps from tradi-
tions even still more questionable. But we only do him justice
in saying that the strict accuracy with which he invariably
gives his authorities enables the reader to exercise a watchful
criticism over what he reads. Mr. Bullock's articles on the
** Kingdoms of Israel and Judah" are very superior to those he
has written on books of Scripture. " Elijah" and " Elisha," like
most of Mr. Grove's articles, are excellent. The history of the
Maccabees, of several of the Seleucidae, and of the Herodian
family, are well given by Mr. "Westcott. The biographies of the
New Testament are of much less value as Dictionary articles
than those of the Old. They are all more or less coloured by
the controversies of the day ; and the writers are too apt to
imagine themselves working for the pulpit or for a theological
journal.

We must not, however, forget that one unfortunate bio-
graphical article belongs to the Old Testament. It is under
*'Noah" that the difficulties of the Flood are considered. The
writer, Mr. Perowne, takes the greatest pains to gather together
all the difficulties that are involved in the admission of a uni-
versal deluge. And he then proceeds to argue that the biblical
narrative does not compel us to adopt so tremendous an hypo-
thesis. The language is confessedly strong, but he thinks it
may be got over. It is got over, in fact, by such expedients
as the following : "It is true that Noah is told to take two *of

656 Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.

every living thing of all flesh/ but that could only mean two of
every animal then known to him, unless we suppose him to
have had supernatural information in zoology imparted — a
thing quite incredible." *'It is natural to suppose that the
writer, when he speaks of ' all flesh,' ' all in whose nostrils
was the breath of life,' refers only to his own locality." What !
after having read, " And the Lord said, I will destroy man
whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and
beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air ; for it

repenteth me that I have made them And God said

unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the
earth is filled with violence through them ; and behold I wiU
destroy them with the earth." Was it only in Noah's locality
that the earth was filled with the violence of man and beast
and creeping thing and fowl of the air? Again, after the
Flood, God says, " I will not again curse the ground any more
for man's sake . . . neither will I again smite any more every
thing living as I have done." And again, " I will establish
my covenant with you ; neither shall all flesh be cut off any
more by the waters of a flood ; neither shall there any more he
a flood to destroy the earth.'' Partial inundations of the most
terrific and destructive kind have certainly taken place in his-
toric times. How do the words we have printed in italics har-
monise with Mr. Perowne's hypothesis that the Noachic deluge
was a partial inundation, " similar to what occurred in the Eunn
of Cutch, on the eastern arm of the Indus, in 1819, when the
sea flowed in, and in a few hours converted a tract of land
2000 square miles in area into an inland sea or lagoon" ?

The chief difficulty which he perceives is the connection of
the statement that " all the high hills that were under the whole
heaven were covered," with the district in which Noah is sup-
posed to have lived, and the assertion that the waters prevailed
fifteen cubits upward. It would have been impossible for the
mountain now called Ararat to have been covered unless the
whole earth were submerged. But he suggests that instead of
Ararat, " a lower mountain range, such as the Zagros range,
for instance, may be intended." We may be mistaken in our
calculations ; but it seems to us impossible to imagine any other
than a universal deluge as covering either the Zagros or any
other range of mountains, and reaching fifteen cubits above it.

The violence done to the sacred text by such interpretations
is contrary to all the principles of sound exegesis. The Noachic
deluge is unmistakeably represented as universal and destruc-
tive of all life except what was preserved in the ark. If, as
Mr. Perowne believes, the scientific evidence against the hypo-
thesis of a universal deluge is conclusive, the biblical narrative

Dr, Smith's Dictioriary of the Bible, 657

is, in some important particulars at least, not historically
true.

Tlie important question, liow far inspiration implies infalli-
bility in historical statements, is, of course, nowhere discussed
in the Dictionary. Most of the writers appear to take it for
granted that inspiration excludes the possibility of historical
inaccuracy. The opposite view, however, is indirectly incul-
cated in Dr. Stanley's article " Stephen." It is there observed
that no less than twelve of St. Stephen's references to the Mo-
saic history differ from it either by variation or addition. Some
of these variations are very remarkable ; for instance —

" 1. The call of Abraham before the migration to Haran ([Acts]
vii. 2), not as according to Gen. xii. 1, in Haran.

2. The death of his father after the call (vii. 4), not as according
to Gen. xi. 32, before it.

3. The seventy-five souls of Jacob's migration (vii. 14), not as
according to Gen. xlvi. 27, seventy.

12. The purchase of the tomb at Shechem by Abraham from the
sons of Emmor (vii. 16), not as according to Gen. xxiii. 15, the purchase
of the cave at Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite."

"It may almost be said," adds Dr. Stanley, "that the whole speech
is a protest against a rigid view of the mechanical exactness of the
inspired records of the Old Testament : ' He had regard,' as St. Jerome
says, ' to the meaning, not to the words.' "

A great Catholic theologian, Melchior Canus,^^ finds no dif-
ficulty in allowing that St. Stephen's memory failed him. The
evangelist correctly reported his speech, and " nos non Stepha-
num ab omni lapsu sed Evangelistam vindicare debemus." But
the dogmatic obligation is quite as great in one case as in the
other. St. Stephen is described as "full of the Holy Ghost;"
and as speaking under those circumstances, wdth reference to
which it was said, " It shall be given to you in that same hour
what you shall speak. For it is not you that speak, but the
Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you." The inspiration
of St. Stephen is as solemnly guaranteed to us as that of a
writer of one of the books of Scripture ; and if an admitted
" lapsus in parvis" is not inconsistent with the inspiration of
the one, neither need it be so with that of the other.

Theology is distinctly excluded from the " scope and object"
of the Dictionary, which the editor says is not intended " to
explain systems of theology, or discuss points of controversial
divinity.'^ In spite of this announcement a good many topics
of controversy are discussed, the writers apparently finding it
hard to resist the temptation of proving that their own High,
Low, or Broad, Church opinions were shared by the writers of
the Bible.

'"' De Locis, ii. 18.

658 Dr. Smith's Dictionarij of the Bible.

The controversial spirit is most conspicuously and offensively
displayed by Mr. Meyrick, who intrudes his sectarian views
every where. This j2:rievous blemish is by no means compen-
sated by the merit of his articles. That on the first epistle of
St. John, one of the most magnificent subjects that could fall
to the lot of a writer, does not rise above the level of a school-
book. In that on the epistle of St. James we are told that the
Jewish vices against which Christians are warned are, " For-
malism, which made the service {dprja/cela) of God consist in
washings and outward ceremonies, whereas he reminds them
(i. 27) that it consists rather in Active Love and Purity (see
Coleridge's Aids to Reflection , Aph. 23 ; note also Active
Love=Bp. Butler's * Benevolence^ and Purity =Bp. Butler's
* Temperance') ; Fanaticism," &c. St. James's doctrine of jus-
tification and the unction of the sick demand a somewhat more
lengthened notice. The discrepancy between St. James and
St. Paul is explained by "faith^^ meaning '* fides informis" in
the former, and " fides forraata" in the latter ; and some old
Anglican books are referred to for further information. Mr.
Meyrick does not seem to know that very important things
have been written on the subject since the time of Bull and
Taylor, or even of Lawrence's Bampton Lectures. He is not
accurate in speaking of James v. 14, 15, as being quoted as
the authority (in his sense of the term) for the sacrament of ex-
treme unction. The unction of the sick was not adopted on
the authority of any text of Scripture. It has been practised,
like infant baptism, from time immemorial, not only in the
Catholic church in communion with Rome, but in all the East-
ern churches, *' orthodox" and heretical. The earliest mention
of it in ecclesiastical antiquity is not as of a novelty, but merely
as of an existing practice. St. James is only quoted in proof of
the antiquity of the practice, and of its being approved by him.
The " extraordinary gifts of the Spirit," in which Mr. Meyrick,
like the common herd of Protestant controversialists, sees a cha-
racteristic distinction between the apostolic and the present
practice, might with as full right be quoted against the prac-
tices of baptism and the imposition of hands.

His article " Mary the Virgin" is in great part a furious
and ignorant onslaught on ''Mariolatry ;" though by what
right this should be introduced into Dr. Smith's Dictionary we
cannot see. The history of the " cultus of the Blessed Virgin"
does not come within the scope of the work any more than
those of the cultus of our Lord and the Holy Ghost, about
which Mr. Meyrick might find it difficult to write so fluently
if he were somewhat better informed than he appears to be.
He believes no doubt that Christ was invoked as Almighty

Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. 659

God from tlie first ; but if so, what has he to reply to those
who would use his own words against him?^*^ "There is
nothing of the sort in the supposed works of Hermas and
Barnabas, nor in the real works of Clement, Ignatius, and
Polycarp — that is, the doctrine is not to be found in the first
century. There is nothing of the sort in Justin Martyr, Tatian,
Athenagoras, Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria, TertuUian —
that is, in the second century. There is nothing of the sort
in Origen, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Cyprian, Methodius, Lac-
tantius — that is, in the third century." And when he goes
beyond the third century, his argument (for his historical
sketch is in fact a mere controversial argument) breaks down
before considerations of another kind. Were it ever so true
that the writers of the fourth, fifth, or ever so many succeeding
centuries were silent as to the cultus of the Blessed Virgin, can
it be denied that these very writers are most enthusiastic pa-
trons of the cultus of the saints, amongst whom Mr. Meyrick
himself places the Blessed Virgin ?

Dr. Kewman's use of the word " deification" with reference
to the saints is spoken of as characteristic of modern Romanism ;
it is, on the contrary, infinitely more common in the writings
of the fourth and fifth centuries ;^^ and the notion is ante-Nicene
that " God became man that man might become God.'^^^

We are not writing a defence of Catholic doctrines, but pro-
testing against Mr. Meyrick^s use of Dr. Smith's Dictionary for
the propagation of his absurd no-Popery arguments. Of his
section on the Immaculate Conception we shall only say that
there is not a line in it which betrays the slightest acquaintance
with the theological grounds on which the doctrine is, rightly
or wrongly, supposed to rest.

But the calibre of Mr. Meyrick' s theological science may
be judged from the following specimen, taken from his article
"Antichrist:''

" That the harlot-woman must be an unfaithful Church is argued
convincingly by Wordsworth (On the Apocalypse^ p. 376), and no less
decisively by Isaac Williams (The Apocalypse, p. 335). A close consi-
deration of the language and import of St. John's prophecy appears, as
Mr. Williams says, to leave no room for doubt on this point. If this be
so, the conclusion seems almost necessarily to follow that the unfaithful
Church spoken of is, as Dr. Wordsworth argues, the Church of Rome.

'6 Vol. ii. p. 267.

^7 It is often found even in ante-Nicene writers. For numerous examples
see a note of Potter in Clem. Alex. t. i. p. 88. One of the passages quoted is
0€OTal, ^yyeXoi Koi deoi, " ubi Deos appellat beatorum animas." Potter's own
explanation of this language is one-sided.

•^ See Iren. adv. Hceres. prsef. ad lib. v. ; Tertull. Apol. c. 21 ; Cyprian, de
Vanit. Idol. c. 6. Innumerable passages to the same effect might be referred to
in later authors.

VOL. IV. X X

660 Dr, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.

And this appears to be the case. The Babylon of the Apocalypse is
probably the Church of Rome, which gradually raised and seated her-
self on the back of the corrupted Church, — the Harlot rider on the
Beast."

Should trash, of this sort be tolerated in a Dictionary which
comes before the public with such pretensions as that of Dr.
Smith?

The most abstruse article in the Dictionary is that on '* Mira-
cles/' by Dr. Fitzgerald, Protestant Bishop of Killaloe. It is a
laborious and indeed painful attempt to maintain an indefen-
sible position — a belief in the miracles of the Bible, combined
with a disbelief of all others. Such a belief, however, is by no
means difficult to one who declares that '' in the case of the
Christian [z. e. Scripture] miracles, the truth of the facts, vary-
ing as they do from our ordinary experience, is far more cre-
dible than the falsehood of a testimony so circumstanced as that
by which they are attested." If this were clearly the case of
the Scripture miracles, it would hardly be necessary to write so
long and elaborate an article as that of Dr. Fitzgerald. But
we have seen how difficult it was for Dr. Thompson to find wit-
nesses for the historians of the New Testament miracles. The
peculiarity, however, according to Dr. Fitzgerald, of these mira-
cles, as to their external evidence, is that they are attested by
" inspired historians ;" and he eiddentty attaches to the word
" inspired" a sense which would make it impossible for any one
who allows it to question the conclusions which it implies. But
he has omitted to tell m& in what the evidence for the superna-
tural character of the testimony consists. In spite of the refer-
ences to Hume and other writers on the subject of miracles, the
whole article seems to give an idea of the motives which would
naturally lead Dr. Fitzgerald himself to doubt the occurrence of
miracles, and of the considerations on the other side of the ques-
tion which would weigh strongly on his own mind, rather than
of considerations which actually impel the present generation
of thinkers one way or another. We are far from denying the
force of his reasonings, taken separately ; much of what he says
in favour of the Scripture miracles is extremely cogent, and so
is much of what he saj^s in denial of ecclesiastical miracles.
But the legitimate result of these reasonings is, contrary to the
writer's intention, either conservative as to ecclesiastical mira-
cles, or destructive as to those recorded in Scripture. The at-
tempt to draw a logical distinction between the two series is
utterly futile ; and its futility is becoming more and more appa-
rent every day. Dr. Smith's Dictionary will, no doubt, help
Englishmen to see how unfairly the evidence is dealt with, ac-
cording as it refers to Scripture miracles or to those of ecclesias-

Dr, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, 06 1

tical history. The silence of Eusebius, for instance, on the In-
vention of the Cross is held to outweigh the positive evidence of
even a host of ecclesiastical authors, and indeed the unanimous
belief of contemporary Christendom ; whilst the " perplexing
phenomenon," as Professor Plumptre calls it, that the first three
gospels omit all mention of so wonderful a fact as the resur-
rection of Lazarus, excites no wonder in ordinary readers of the
Bible.

The geographical articles are, as a rule, excellent. It is,
however, to be regretted that the paradoxes of so able a writer
as Mr. Fergusson about the site of the Holy Sepulchre should
be given to the reader as the latest results of topographical
science. It has always been considered that the site now
pointed out as that of the Holy Sepulchre is the same as that
recognised as such in the time of Constantino ; and the only
question has been held to be, whether Constantino and his con-
temporaries were not mistaken. The chief, or rather the only
serious, reason for distrusting their evidence lay in the position
of the supposed Grolgotha. On looking at its place on the map
of Jerusalem, it was difficult to believe that such a site could
ever have been a place of tombs, and lain without the walls of
the city. But this topographical difficulty has certainly been
cleared up. " In the topographical question," says Dr. Stanley,
liimself a sceptic on the subject, " the opponents of the iden-
tity of the Sepulchre have never done justice to the argument
first cleari}^ stated in England by Lord IN'ugent, and pointedly
brought out by Professor Willis, which is derived from the
so-called tombs of Joseph and JN^icodemus. Underneath the
western galleries of the church, behind the Holy Sepulchre, are
two excavations in the face of the rock, forming an ancient
Jewish sepulchre as clearly as any that can be seen in the Val-
ley of Hinnom or in the Tombs of the Kings The tradi-
tional names of Joseph and Nicodemus are probably valueless ;
but the existence of these sepulchres proves almost to a certainty
that at some period the site of the present church must have
been outside the walls of the city, and lends considerable proba-
bility to the belief that the rocky excavation — which perhaps
exists in part still, and certainly once existed entire — within
the marble casing of the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre was at
any rate a really ancient tomb, and not, as is often rashly
asserted, a modern structure intended to imitate it.'^ Now of
this solution of the topographical difficulty Mr. Fergusson says
nothing. He merely repeats that "the site of the present
church is obviously at variance with the facts of the Bible nar-
rative." But he argues, on the other hand, with great force, in
favour of the probability that Constantino and those who acted

662 Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible,

with him possessed sufficient information to enable them ta
ascertain exactly the precise localities of the crucifixion and
burial of our Lord. The mistake, he thinks, was not made by
Constantino and his contemporaries, but by the Christians of a
later age, after the Holy Sepulchre had fallen into the hands of
the Saracens. The ingenious arguments by which he \mder-
takes to prove that the site of Constantine's Basilica is to be
identified with that of the Mosque of Omar have now for a long
time been before the learned world, and have not produced con-
viction. Most persons will agree with Dr. Stanley in consider-
ing the historical objections to this hypothesis insurmountable.

Mr. Layard, Professor Rawlinson, Professor Oppert, and
Mr. R. S. Poole of the British Museum, have contributed ar-
ticles which represent the amount of illustration that biblical
science may derive from recent discoveries in Babylonian and
Egyptian archaeology. The article " Nineveh" is by Mr. Layard.
To Professor Oppert we are indebted for one containing the
translation of the Borsippa inscription, in which he sees an
allusion to the confusion of tongues. The new witness to the
biblical narrative is no other than King IS'abuchodonosor. ''A
former king,'' he says, ** built [the Tower of Borsippa] (they
reckon forty-two ages), but he did not complete its head. Since
a remote time people had abando7ied it, without order expressing
their words. Since that time the earthquake and the thunder
had dispersed its sun-dried clay ; the bricks of the casing had
been split, and the earth of the interior had been scattered
in heaps. Merodach, the great lord, excited my mind to repair
this building,^' &c. Whatever differences may exist among
scholars as to the exact interpretation of the inscriptions in
cuneiform character, there can be no doubt that the department
undertaken by Professor Rawlinson, who has furnished a long
series of valuable articles, could not have been entrusted to
better hands. We are sorry not to be able to speak quite as
favourably of Mr. R. S. Poole's articles. The absurd blunders
which are constantly made by biblical scholars when they ap-
peal to Egyptian lore for illustration, and the frequency of these
appeals, furnish very good reasons for entrusting an important
department of the Dictionary to a competent and trustworthy
scholar. But Mr. Poole, in spite of his undoubted learning, is
not altogether to be depended upon. In this department there
are, of course, blunders and omissions for which he is not re-
sponsible. He is not to be blamed if the derivation of Behemoth m
from an impossible Coptic word supposed to signify " water-ox'*^ J
is repeated by Mr. Drake and Mr. Bevan ; he would, no doubt,
if consulted, have assured Dr. Stanley that tlie etymology of
the name Moses, from the Coptic " mo — water, and ushe —

Dr, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, 663

saved," is not to be seriously thought of ; he would have been
able to give curious and interesting information not found in
the articles "Askalon," ''Damascus," and others. The dis-
covery made by M. Chabas that the Egyptians practised circum-
cision at a time which we believe to be anterior to the Exodus,
and that of the etymology of I^o-Ammon, are too recent to have
been utilised. But our quarrel with him is not for being be-
hind the best Egyptologists of the day, or for the faults and
shortcomings of his fellow-contributors, but for his own serious
mistakes, and particularly for using the pages of so important
a work of reference as a Bible Dictionary (and so many of them
too) for the purpose of giving currency to fancies which, he
should be aware, can never meet with the sanction of first-rate
scholars. We are aware that he sometimes ventures to express
his dissent from the authority of great scholars, but it is not by
any means clear that he does so with advantage to himself or
others. In the article " Magic,'' for instance, he conjectures an
etymological relation between the Hebrew teraphim and an
Egyptian group which beyond all question ought to be read
cheper, but which he reads ter. The difficulty arising from the
want in this word of the third radical of teraphim he acknow-
ledges to be a serious one ; but he falls back " on our present
state of ignorance respecting the ancient Egyptian and the
primitive language of Chaldsea in their verbal relations to the
Semitic family."

The following note, however, strikes us with astonishment :

"Egyptologists have generally read this word TEE. Mr. Birch,
however, reads it CHEPER. .... The balance is decided by the
discovery of the Coptic equivalent TCV * transmutare,' in which the
absence of the final R is explained by a peculiar but regular modifica-
tion which the writer was the first to point out (Hieroglyphics, Ency-
clopcedia Britannicay 8th ed. p. 421)."

Here we have, in the first place, a statement implying that
a reading, cheper, of one of the commonest words in the Egyp-
tian language (it signifies be, become) is peculiar to Mr. Birch,
Egyptologists in general reading the word otherwise ; whilst it
is notorious, on the other hand, that ever since Mr. Birch dis-
covered proofs of the reading cheper, every Egyptologist of note
has accepted this reading. The evidence in its favour was
irresistible. And, secondly, Mr. Poole has the appearance at
least of claiming the priority of the discovery of an important
philological law which is distinctly enunciated by ChampoUion
in his Egyptian Grammar.

All competent judges, we are sure, will agree with us that
Mr. Poole is not the safest guide in Egyptian philology, and.

664" Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible,

will be disposed to look with suspicion on his numerous contri-
butions to Dr. Smith's Dictionary. The speculations in the
articles " Naphtuhim^^ and "Phut^^ are quite unfit for such a
work. And what else can be said of the following chain of rea-
soning from the article *' Caphtor, Caphtorim" ? The Phi-
listines, it will be remembered, are said to have come from
Caphtor, and are called Caphtorim.

*^The writer {Encyclopcedia Britannica^ 8th ed., Egypt, p. 419) has
proposed to recognise Caphtor in the ancient Egyptian name of Coptos.
This name, if Hterally transcribed, is written in the hieroglyphics Kebtu,
Keb-ta, and Keb-Her,i^ probably pronounced Kubt, Kabt, and Kebt-
Hor (Brugsch, Geogr. Inschr. Taf. xxxviii. no. 899,900), whence
Coptic . . . Gr. KoTTTos, Arab . . . Kuft. The similarity of name is so
great that it alone might satisfy us ; but the correspondence of AiyirTrros,
as if ATa yvTCTO'Si to ""•i^^? ■'s:, unless "^i? refer to the Philistine coast,
seems conclusive. We must not suppose, however, that Caphtor was
Coptos : it must rather be compared to the Coptite nome, probably in
primitive ages of greater extent than under the Ptolemies, for the num-
ber of nomes was in the course of time greatly extended."

The articles " Chronology,' ' *' Egypt,'' "The Exodus,"
" Pharaoh," and some others, are written for the purpose of
supporting what we consider a completely false system of bib-
lical chronology. Some, indeed, of Mr. Poole's chronological
arguments we confess to be unintelligible to us. We do not
understand, for instance, his favourite one, " from the celebra-
tion of great passovers.'' The paragraph on "sabbatical and
jubilee years" finishes with the following sentence : " This re-
sult would place the Exodus in the middle of the seventeenth
century B.C., a time for which we believe there is a preponder-
ance of evidence." We find it impossible to discover the pre-
misses or train of reasoning which are supposed to lead to this
result.

Other arguments of Mr. Poole for his date of the Exodus
have already been noticed in this Review, and it is unnecessary
to repeat the arguments by which they are met. It is, however,
important to state that his solution of the difiiculty about the
treasure-cities Pithom and Pameses appears to us untenable.
" We need only repeat,'' he says, " that the highest date to
which Pameses I. can be reasonably assigned is consistent alone
with the Pabbinical date of the Exodus, and that we find a
prince of the same name two centuries earlier, and therefore at
a time perhaps consistent with Ussher's date, so that the place
might have taken its name either from this prince or a yet
earlier king or prince Rameses." This solution of a really in-

"• Keb-Her or Keb-Hor signifies " the Coptos of the god Horus." The god's
name is no part of the geographical name.

Br. Smitlis Dictionary of the Bible, 665

surmountable difficulty in the way of Mr. Poole's chronological
hypothesis inyolves an important philological error. The He-
brew transcription DOa^i leaves no doubt as to the Egyptian
name for which it stands. That name is the royal one of Ra-
mes-es, frequently written Ra-mes-su ; and the formation of it
is very remarkable. It is not made up of two elements, like
Aah-mes, Thoth-mes, Chonsu-mes, but of three. The second D
of the Hebrew transcription represents as distinct and essential
a syllabic portion of the name as the first syllable, 37^, or the
second, D>::. Whatever explanation be given of the name, it
is not grammatically equivalent to Ea-mes, which is literally
" Sun-born." This, and not Rameses, is the name of the prince
referred to by Mr. Poole. To identify the two names is as great
an error as to confound Forest and Forester.

The science of language is represented in two or three arti-
cles. That on " Shemitic Languages and Writing," by Arch-
deacon Ormerod, contains a good , deal of interesting matter
borrowed from Max Miiller, Renan, Ewald, and other philolo-
gists; but the writer's own judgment is by no means to be relied
upon. The following passage will, we suspect, meet but little
favour among really sound philologists :

*' Is it altogether a wild conjecture to assume as not impossible the
formation of a sacred language among the chosen people, at so marked
a period of their history as that of Moses ? Every argument leads to a
belief that the popular dialect of the Hebrews from a very early period
was deeply tinged with Aramaic, and that it continued so. But there is
surely nothing unlikely or inconsistent in the notion that he who was
'learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians' should have been taught to
introduce a sacred language, akin but superior to the every-day dialect
of his people, — the property of the rulers, and which subsequent writers
should be guided to copy."

There remain, of course, a great many articles of which we
have not spoken ; but, with the exception of those belonging to
the department of natural history, which cannot be too highly
praised, they do not call for any special notice. Our remarks
have been confined to those upon which the character of the
Dictionary chiefly depends; and with reference to them, it
is impossible for us to judge more favourably than we have
done in the foregoing pages. They are unsatisfactory from a
purely scientific point of view ; and, if considered with reference
to the apologetic purpose which seems to have inspired many of
them, they are deplorable. During the last hundred years the
external evidences of Christianity have undergone a profound
modification, partly through changes of opinion as to the nature
of historical evidence in general, and partly through the discus-
sion of evidences special to Christianity. That which was for-

666 Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible,

merly considered important evidence in political or literary
history is now, in many cases, not considered as evidence at all.
It cannot be expected that, if the apostolic antiquity of the
gospels is called in question, its adversaries will accept as con-
vincing what might have been a hundred years ago, but would
not now be, so considered in the case of profane literature.
It has been demonstrated that part of the evidence to which
learned Protestants appealed in past times is in fact part of
that very Catholic tradition against which the Reformers pro-
tested, and that its sole cogency as evidence is derived from the
authority, rightly or wrongly, assigned to Catholic tradition as
such.^^ It cannot be accepted without involving the additional
evidence which it furnishes of the apostolic origin of the entire
Catholic system, as found in the Fathers of the latter half of the
second century. And this, again, involves a great deal more than
is explicitly written in the works of the Fathers. Every argu-
ment which tells against tradition tells also against the evidence
for the Bible ; and the Bible can only recover its authority on
grounds which cannot be conceded without also admitting the
fundamental doctrines of Catholicism.

-0 " Abgesehen von dieser Halbheit verwickelte sich jedoch der Protestan-
tismus mit seiner Verwerfung der Tradition in anflfallende Inkonsequenzen.
Einerseits sind die katholischen Ueberlieferungen, die er fallen liess, zum Theil
Tim nichts schlechter geschichtlich bezeugt, als diejenigen die es in christlichem
Interesse festlialten zu miissen geglaubt hat ; andererseits ist es ja einzig die
katholische Tradition, durch welche das N. T. selbst beglaubigt und Tcrbiirgt
ist ; denn dass jene Schriften, in welehen der Protestantismus seine normativen
Glaubensurkunden erkennt, wirklich apostolischen TJrsprungs seyen, sagt uns
nur jene kirchliche Tradition, deren Gultigkeit und zuiangliche Beweiskraft
die Reformation eben bestreitet." Schwegler, Nachapostolisches Zeitalter, B. i.
p. 3.

[ 667 ]

CONFLICTS WITH ROME.

Among the causes \Yliich have brought dishonour on the Church
in recent years, none have had a more fatal operation than those
conflicts with science and literature which have led men to dis-
pute the competence, or the justice, or the wisdom, of her au-
thorities. Rare as such conflicts have been, they have awakened
a special hostility which the defenders of Catholicism have not
succeeded in allaying. They have induced a suspicion that
the Church, in her zeal for the prevention of error, represses
that intellectual freedom which is essential to the progress of
truth ; that she allows an administrative interference with con-
victions to which she cannot attach the stigma of falsehood;
and that she claims a right to restrain the growth of knowledge,
to justify an acquiescence in ignorance, to promote error, and
even to alter at her arbitrary will the dogmas that are proposed
to faith. There are few faults or errors imputed to Catholicism,
which individual Catholics have not committed or held; and
the instances on which these particular accusations are founded
have sometimes been supplied by the acts of authority itself.
Dishonest controversy loves to confound the personal with the
spiritual element in the Church — to ignore the distinction be-
tween the sinful agents and the divine institution. And this
confusion makes it easy to deny, what otherwise would be too
evident to question, that knowledge has a freedom in the Ca-
tholic Church which it can find in no other religion ; though
there, as elsewhere, freedom degenerates unless it has to struggle
in its own defence.

Nothing can better illustrate this truth than the actual
course of events in the cases of Lamennais and Frohschammer.
They are two of the most conspicuous instances in point ; and
they exemplify the opposite mistakes through which a haze of
obscurity has gathered over the true notions of authority and
freedom in the Church. The correspondence of Lamennais and
the later writings of Frohschammer furnish a revelation which
ought to warn all those who, through ignorance, or timidity, or
weakness of faith, are tempted to despair of the reconciliation
between science and religion, and to acquiesce either in the sub-
ordination of one to the other, or in their complete separation
and estrangement. Of these alternatives Lamennais chose the
first, Frohschammer the second ; and the exaggeration of the
claims of authority by the one, and the extreme assertion of
independence by the other, have led them, by contrary paths,
to nearly the same end.

668 Conflicts loith Rome,

When Lamennais surveyed the fluctuations of science, the
multitude of opinions, the confusion and conflict of theories, he
■was led to doubt the efficacy of all human tests of truth. Science
seemed to him essentially tainted with hopeless uncertainty.
In his ignorance of its methods, he fancied them incapable
of attaining to any thing more than a greater or less degree of
probability, and powerless to afford a strict demonstration, or
to distinguish the deposit of real knowledge amidst the turbid
current of opinion. He refused to admit that there is a sphere
within which metaphysical philosophy speaks with absolute
certainty, or that the landmarks set up by history and natural
science may be such as neither authority nor prescription,
neither the doctrine of the schools ner the interest of the
Church, has the power to disturb or the right to evade. These
sciences presented to his eyes a chaos incapable of falling into
order and haniiony by any internal self-development, and re-
quiring the action of an external director to clear up its dark-
ness and remove its uncertainty. He thought that no research,
however rigorous, could make sure of any fragment of know-
ledge worthy the name, tie admitted no certainty but that
which relied on the general tradition of mankind, recorded and
sanctioned by the infallible judgment of the Holy See. He
would have all power committed, and every question referred,
to that supreme and universal authority. Y^y its means he
would supply all the gaps in the horizon of the human intellect,
settle every controversy, solve the problems of science, and
regulate the policy of states.

The extreme Ultramontanism which seeks the safeguard of
faith in the absolutism of Rome he believed to be the keystone
of the Catholic system. In his eyes, all who rejected it, the
Jesuits among them, were Galileans ; and Gallicanism was the
corruption of the Christian idea.^ " If my principles are re-
jected," he wrote on the 1st of November 1820, "I see no
means of defending religion effectually, no decisive answer to
the objections of the unbelievers of our time. How could
these principles be favourable to them? they are simply the
development of the great Catholic maxim, quod semper, quod
uhique, quod ah omnibus." Joubert said of him, with perfect
justice, that when he destroyed all the bases of human certainty,
in order to tretain no foundation but authority, he destroyed
authority itself. The confidence which led him to confound the
human element with the divine in the Holy See was destined
to be tried by the severest of all tests ; and his exaggeration of
the infallibility of the Pope proved fatal to his religious faith.

In 1831 the Eoman Breviary was not to be bought in Paris.
^ Lvimenn&is, Correspondance. Nouvelle edition. (Paris: Didier.)

Conflicts icith Rome, 669

We may hence measure the amount of opposition with which
Lamennais's endeavours to exalt Rome would be met by the
majority of the French bishops and clergy, and by the school of
St. Sulpice. For him, on the other hand, no terms were too
strong to express his animosity against those who rejected his
teaching and thwarted his designs. The bishops he railed
at as idiotic devotees, incredibly blind, supernaturally foolish.
The Jesuits, he said, were " grenadiers de la folie,^^ and united
imbecility with the vilest passions.^ He fancied that in many
dioceses there was a conspiracy to destroy religion, that a schism
was at hand, and that the reoistance of the clergy to his prin-
ciples threatened to destroy Catholicism in France. Rome, he
was sure, would help him in his struggle against her faithless
assailants, on behalf of her authority, and in his endeavours to
make the clergy refer their disputes to her, so as to receive
from the Pope's mouth the infallible oracles of eternal truth.^
Whatever the Pope might decide, would, he said, be right, for
the Pope alone was infallible. Bishops might be sometimes
resisted, but the Pope never.^ It was both absurd and blas-
phemous even to advise him. " I have read in the Diario di
Roma,'' he said, " the advice of M. de Chateaubriand to the
Holy Ghost. At any rate, the Holy Ghost is fully warned ;
and if he makes a mistake this time, it will not be the ambas-
sador's fault.'-'

Three Popes passed away ; and still nothing was done
against the traitors he was for ever denouncing. This reserve
astounded him. Was Rome herself tainted with Gallicanism,
and in league with those who had conspired for her destruction ?
What but a schism could ensue from this inexplicable apathy ?
The silence was a grievous trial to his faith. " Let us shut our
eyes,'' he said, " let us invoke the Holy Spirit, let us collect all
the powers of our soul, that our faith may not be shaken."^ In
his perplexity he began to make distinctions between the Pope
and the Roman Court. The advisers of the Pope were traitors,
dwellers in the outer darkness, blind and deaf; the Pope himself
and he alone was infallible, and would never act so as to injure
the faith, though meanwhile he was not aware of the real state
of things, and was evidently deceived by false reports.^ A few
months later came the necessity for a further distinction be-
tween the Pontiff and the Sovereign. If the doctrines of the
Avenir had caused displeasure at Rome, it was only on political
grounds. If the Pope was oiFended, he was offended not as
Vicar of Christ, but as a temporal monarch implicated in the
political system of Europe. In his capacity of spiritual head of

2 April 12 and June 25, 1830. 3 ^cb. 27, 1831.

* March 30, 1831. ^ May 8 and June 15, 1829. ^ j-gb^ 5, 1830.

670 . Coirflicts with Rome,

the Clmrch, he could not condemn writers for sacrificing all
human and political considerations to the supreme interests of
the Church, but must in reality agree with them."^ As the
Polish Revolution brought the political questions into greater
prominence, Lamennais became more and more convinced of
the wickedness of those who surrounded Gregory XVI., and of
the political incompetence of the Pope himself. He described
him as weeping and praying, motionless amidst the darkness
which the ambitious, corrupt, and frantic idiots around him
were ever striving to thicken.^ Still he felt secure. When the
foundations of the Church were threatened, when an essential
doctrine was at stake, though, for the first time in eighteen cen-
turies, the supreme authority might refuse to speak,^ at least
it could not speak out against the truth. In this belief he made
his last journey to Rome. Then came his condemnation. The
staflf on which he leaned with all his weight broke in his hands;
the authority he had so grossly exaggerated turned against him;
and his faith was left without support. His system supplied no
resource for such an emergency. He submitted, not because he
was in error, but because Catholics had no right to defend the
Church against the supreme will even of an erring PontifF.^^
He was persuaded that his silence would injure religion, yet he
deemed it his duty to be silent and to abandon theology. He
had ceased to believe that the Pope could not err ; but he still
believed that he could not lawfully be disobeyed. In the two
years during which he still remained in the Church his faith in
her system fell rapidly to pieces. Within two months after the
publication of the Encyclica he wrote that the Pope, like the
other princes, seemed careful not to omit any blunder that
could secure his annihilation.^^ Three weeks afterwards he de-
nounced, in the fiercest terms, the corruption of Rome. He
predicted that the ecclesiastical hierarchy was about to depart
with the old monarchies ; and, though the Church could not die,
he would not undertake to say that she would revive in her
old forms. ^'-^ The Pope, he said, had so zealously embraced the
cause of antichristian despotism as to sacrifice to it the religion
of which he was the chief. He no longer felt it possible to
distinguish what was immutable in the external organisation of
the Church. He admitted the personal fallibility of the Pope,
and declared that, though it was impossible, without Rome, to
defend Catholicism successfully, yet nothing could be hoped for
from her, and that she seemed to have condemned Catholicism
to die.^'^ The Pope, he soon afterwards said, was in league
with the kings in opposition to the eternal truths of religion,

' Aug. 15, 1831. « Feb. 10, 1832. » July 6, 1829.

>» Sept. 15, 1832. " Oct. 9, 1832. ^2 Jan. 25, 1833. '3 Feb. 5, 1833.

Conflicts ivith Rome, 67!

the hierarchy was out of court, and a transformation like that
from which the Church and Papacy had sprung was about to
bring them both to an end, after eighteen centuries, in Gregory
XVI.^^ Before the following year was over he had ceased to
be in communion with the Catholic Church.

The fall of Lamennais, however impressive as a warning, is
of no great historical importance ; for he carried no -one with
him, and his favourite disciples became the ablest defenders of
Catholicism in France. But it exemplifies one of the natural
consequences of dissociating secuhir from religious truth, and
denying that they hold in solution all the elements necessary
for their reconciliation and union. In more recent times, the
same error has led, by a contrary path, to still more lamentable
results, and scepticism on the possibility of harmonising reason
and faith has once more driven a philosopher into heresy.
Between the fiiU of Lamennais and the conflict with Froh-
schammer many metaphysical writers among the Catholic clergy
had incurred the censures of Rome. It is enough to cite
Bautain in France, Eosmini in Italy, and Giinther in Austria.
But in these cases no scandal ensued, and the decrees were
received with prompt and hearty submission. In the cases of
Lamennais and Frohschammer no speculative question was ori-
ginally at issue, but only the question of authority. A com-
parison between their theories will explain the similarity in the
courses of the two men, and at the same time will account for
the contrast between the isolation of Lamennais and the influ-
ence of Frohschammer, though the one was the most eloquent
writer in France, and the head of a great school, and the other,
before the late controversy, was not a writer of much name.
This contrast is the more remarkable since religion had not re-
vived in France when the French philosopher wrote, while for
the last quarter of a century Bavaria has been distinguished
among Catholic nations for the faith of her people. Yet La-
mennais was powerless to injure a generation of comparatively
ill-instructed Catholics, while Frohschammer, with inferior gifts-
of persuasion, has won educated followers even in the home of
Ultramontanism.

The first obvious explanation of this dIflSculty is the narrow-
ness of Lamennais's philosophy. At the time of his dispute
with the Holy See he had somewhat lost sight of his tradition-
alist theory ; and his attention, concentrated upon politics, was.
directed to the problem of reconciling religion with liberty, — a
question with which the best minds in France are still occupied.
But how can a view of policy constitute a philosophy? He
began by thinking that it was expedient for the Church to ob-
» March 25, 1833.

672 Conflicts with Rome

tain the safeguards of freedom, and tliat she shonld renounce the
losing cause of the old regime. But this was no more philosophy
than the similar argument which had previously won her to the
side of despotism when it was the stronger cause. As Bonald,
however, had erected absolute monarchy into a dogma, so La-
mennais proceeded to do with freedom. The Church, he said,
was on the side of freedom, because it was the just side, not
because it was the stronger. As De Maistre had seen the vic-
tory of Catholic principles in the Restoration, so Lamennuis saw
it in the revolution of 1830.

This was obviously too narrow and temporary a basis for a
philosophy. The Church is interested, not in the triumph of a
principle or a cause which may be dated as that of 1789, or of
1815, or of 1830, but in the triumph of justice and the just
cause, whether it be that of the people or of the crown, of a
Catholic party or of its opponents. She admits the tests of
public law and political science. When these proclaim the
existence of the conditions which justify an insurrection or a
war, she cannot condemn that insurrection or that war. She is
guided in her judgment on these causes by criteria which are
not her own, but are borrowed from departments over which she
has no supreme control. This is as true of science as it is of
law and politics. Other truths are as certain as those which
natural or positive law embraces, and other obligations as im-
perative as those w^iich regulate the relations of subjects and
authorities. The principle which places right above expedience
in the political action of the Church has an equal application
in history or in astronomy. The Church can no more identify
her cause with scientific error than w^ith political wrong. Her
interests may be impaired by some measure of political justice,
or by the admission of some fact or document. But in neither
case can she guard her interests at the cost of denying the
truth.

This is the principle which has so much difficulty in obtain-
ing recognition in an age when science is more or less irre-
ligious, and when Catholics more or less neglect its study.
Political and intellectual liberty have the same claims and the
same conditions in the eyes of the Church. The Catholic
judges the measures of governments and the discoveries of
science in exactly the same manner. Public law may make it
imperative to overthrow a Catholic monarch, like James II.,
or to uphold a Protestant monarch, like the King of Prussia.
The demonstrations of science may oblige us to believe that
the earth revolves round the sun, or that the donation of Con-
stantine is epurious. The apparent interests of religion have
much to say against all this; but religion itself prevents those

Conflicts with Rome, 6T3

considerations from prevailing. Tliis has not been seen by
those writers who have done most in defence of the principle.
They have usually considered it from the standing ground of
their own practical aims, and have therefore foiled to attain
that general view which might have been suggested to them by
the pursuit of truth as a whole. French writers have done
much for political liberty, and Germans for intellectual liberty;
but the defenders of the one cause have generally had so little
sympathy with the other, that they have nefrlected to defend
their own on the grounds common to both. There is hardly a
Catholic writer who has penetrated to the common source from
which they spring. And this is the greatest defect in Catholic
literature, even to the present day.

In the majority of those who have afforded the chief ex-
amples of this error, and particularly in Lamennais, the weak-
ness of faith which it implies has been united with that looseness
of thought which resolves all knowledge into opinion, and fails
to appreciate methodical investigation or scientific evidence.
But it is less easy to explain how a priest, fortified with the
armour of Geruian science, should have failed as completely
in the same enquiry. In order to solve the difficulty, we must
go back to the time when the theory of Frohschammer arose,
and review some of the circumstances out of which it sprang.

For adjusting the relations between science and authority,
the method of Rome had long been that of economy and accom-
modation. In dealing with literature, her paramount consider-
ation was the fear of scandal. Books were forbidden, not merely
because their statements were denied, but because they seemed
injurious to morals, derogatory to authority, or dangerous to
faith. To be so, it was not necessary that they should be un-
true. For isolated truths separated from other known truths
by an interval of conjecture, in which error might find room to
construct its works, may offer perilous occasions to unprepared
and unstable minds. The policy was therefore to allow such
truths to be put forward only hypothetically, or altogether to
suppress them. The latter alternative was especially appro-
priated to historical investigations, because they contained most
elements of danger. In them the progress of knowledge has
been for centuries constant, rapid, and sure ; every generation
has brought to light masses of information previously unknown,
the successive publication of which furnished ever new incen-
tives and more and more ample means of enquiry into ecclesi-
astical history. This enquiry has gradually laid bare the whole
policy and process of ecclesiastical authority, and has removed
from the past that veil of mystery wherewith, like all other au-
thorities, it tries to surround the present. The human element

%

674 Conflicts with Rome,

in ecclesiastical administration endeavours to keep itself out of
sight, and to deny its own existence, in order that it may se-
cure the unquestioning submission which authority naturally
desires, and may preserve that halo of infallibility which the
twilight of opinion enables it to assume. Now the most severe
exposure of the part played by this human element is found in
histories w^hich show the undeniable existence of sin, error, or
fraud, in the high-places of the Church. Not, indeed, that any
history furnishes, or can furnish, materials for undermining the
authority which the dogmas of the Church proclaim to be neces-
sary for her existence. But the true limits of legitimate autho-
rity are one thing, and the area which authority may find it
expedient to attempt to occupy is another. The interests of the
Church are not necessarily identical with those of the ecclesias-
tical government. A government does not desire its powers to
be strictly defined ; but the subjects require the line to be drawn
with increasing precision. Authority may be protected by its
subjects being kept in ignorance of its faults, and by their hold-
ing it in superstitious admiration. But religion has no commu-
nion with any manner of error ; and the conscience can only be
injured by such arts, which, in reality, give a far more formidable
measure of the influence of the human element in ecclesiastical
government than any collection of detached cases of scandal
can do. For these arts are simply those of all human govern-
ments which possess legislative power, fear attack, deny re-
sponsibility, and therefore shrink from scrutiny.

One of the great instruments for preventing historical scru-
tiny had long been the Index of prohibited books, which was
accordingly directed, not against falsehood only, but particularly
against certain departments of truth. Through it an effort had
been made to keep the knowledge of ecclesiastical history from
the faithful, and to give currency to a fabulous and fictitious
picture of the progress and action of the Church. The means
would have been found quite inadequate to the end, if it had
not been for the fact that while society was absorbed by con-
troversy knowledge was only valued so far as it served a con-
troversial purpose. Every party in those days virtually had its
own prohibitive Index, to brand all inconvenient truths w^ith the
note of falsehood. No party cared for knowledge that could not
be made available for arg-ument. Neutral and ambifi^uous science

• -r

had no attractions for men engaged in perpetual combat. Its
spirit first won the naturalists, the mathematicians, and the phi-
lologists ; then it vivified the otherwise aimless erudition of the
Benedictines; and at last it was carried into history, to give
new life to those sciences which deal with the tradition, tlic law,
and the action of the Church.

Conflicts with Rome, 675

The home of this transformation was in the universities of
Germany; for there the Catholic teacher was placed in circum-
stances altogether novel. He had to address men who had
every opportunity of becoming familiar with the arguments of
the enemies of the Church, and with the discoveries and con-
clusions of those whose studies were without the bias of any
religious object. Whilst he lectured in one room, the next
might be occupied by a pantheist, a rationalist, or a Lutheran,
descanting on the same topics. When he left the desk, his
place miglit be taken by some great original thinker or scholar,
who would display all the results of his meditations without
regard for their tendency, and without considering what effects
they might have on the weak. He was obliged often to draw
attention to books lacking the Catholic spirit, but indispensable
to the deeper student. Here, therefore, the system of secrecy,
economy, and accommodation was rendered impossible by the
competition of knowledge, in which the most thorough ex-
position of the truth was sure of the victory; and the system
itself became inapplicable as the scientific spirit penetrated
ecclesiastical literature in Germany.

In Rome, however, where the influences of competition were
not felt, the reasons of the change could not be understood, nor
its benefits experienced; and it was thought absurd that the
Germans of the nineteenth century should discard weapons
which had been found efl^icacious with the Germans of the six-
teenth. While in Rome it was still held that the truths of
science need not be told, and ought not to be told, if, in the
judgment of Roman theologians, they were of a nature to offend
faith, in Germany Catholics vied with Protestants in publishing
matter without being diverted by the consideration Avhether it
might serve or injure their cause in controversy, or whether it
was adverse or favourable to the views which it was the object
of the Index to protect. But though this great antagonism
existed, there was no collision. A moderation was exhibited
which contrasted remarkably with the aggressive spirit pre-
vailing in France and Italy. rPublications were suffered to pass
unnoted in Germany which would have been immediately cen-
sured if they had come forth beyond the Alps or the Rhine.
In this way a certain laxity grew up side by side with an un-
measured distrust, and German theologians and historians es-
caped censure.

This toleration gains significance from its contrast to the
severity with which Rome smote the German philosophers like
Hermes and Giinther when they erred. Here, indeed, the case
was very different. If Rome had insisted upon suppressing docu-
ments, perverting facts, and resisting criticism, she would have

VOL. IV. y y

676 Conflicts with Rome,

been only opposing truth, and opposing it consciously, for fear of
its inconveniences. But if she had refrained from denouncing
a philosophy which denied creation or the personality of God, she
would have failed to assert her own doctrines against her own
children who contradicted them. The philosopher cannot claim
the same exemption as the historian. God's handwriting exists
in history independently of the Church, and no ecclesiastical
exigence can alter a fact. The divine lesson has been read;
and it is the historian's duty to copy it faithfully without bias
and without ulterior views. The Catholic may be sure that as
the Church has lived in spite of the fact, she will also survive its
publication. But philosophy has to deal with some facts which,
although as absolute and objective in themselves, are not and
cannot be known to us except through revelation, of which the
Church is the organ. A philosophy which requires the altera-
tion of these facts is in patent contradiction against the Church.
Both cannot coexist. One must destroy the other.

Two circumstances very naturally arose to disturb this
equilibrium. There were divines who wished to extend to
Germany the old authority of the Index, and to censure or pro-
hibit books which, though not heretical, contained matter in-
jurious to the reputation of ecclesiastical authority, or contrary
to the common opinions of Catholic theologians. On the other
hand, there were philosophers, of the schools of Hermes and
Giinther, who would not retract the doctrines which the Church
condemned. One movement tended to repress even the know-
ledge of demonstrable truth ; and the other aimed at destroying
the dogmatic authority of the Holy See. In this way a colli-
sion was prepared, which was eventually brought about by the
writings of Dr. Frohschammer,

Ten years ago, when he was a very young lecturer on
philosophy in the university of Munich, he published a work on
the origin of the soul, in which he argued against the theory of
preexistence, and against the common opinion that each soul
is created directly by Almighty God, defending the theory of
Generatianism by the authority of several Fathers, and quot-
ing, among other modern divines, Klee, the author of the most
esteemed treatise of dogmatic theology in the German language.
It was decided at Rome that his book should bo condemned ;
and he was informed of the intention, in order that he might
announce his submission before the publication of the decree.

His position was a difficult one; and it appears to be ad-
mitted that his conduct at this stage was not j)rompted by those
opinions on the authority of the Church, in which he afterwards
took refuge, but must be explained by the known facts of the
case. His doctrine had been lately taught in a book generally

Conflicts with Rome. 677

read and approved. He was convinced that he had at least
refuted the opposite theories; and yet it was apparently in be-
half of one of these that he was condemned. Whatever errors his
book contained, he might fear that an act of submission would
seem to imply his acceptance of an opinion he heartily believed
to be wrong, and would therefore be an act of treason to truth.
The decree conveyed no conviction to his mind. It is only
the utterances of an infallible authority that men can believe
without argument and explanation ; and here was an autho-
rity not infallible, giving no reasons, and yet claiming a sub-
mission of the reason. Dr. Frohschammer found himself in
a dilemma. To submit absolutely would either be a virtual
acknowledgment of the infallibility of the authority, or a con-
fession that an ecclesiastical decision necessarily bound the
mind irrespectively of its truth or justice. In either case, he
would have contradicted the law of religion and of the Church.
To submit, while retaining his own opinion, to a disciplinary
decree, in order to preserve peace and avoid scandal, and to make
a general acknowledgment that his work contained various ill-
considered and equivocal statements which might bear a bad
construction, — such a conditional submission either would not
have been that which the Koman Court desired and intended,
or, if made without explicit statement of its meaning, would
have been in some measure deceitful and hypocritical. In the
first case it would not have been received ; in the second case
it could not have been made without loss of S2lf-respect. More-
over, as the writer was a public professor, bound to instruct
his hearers accordino; to his best knowledge, he could not
change his teaching while his opinion remained unchanged.
These considerations, and not any desire to defy authority, or
introduce new opinions by a process more or less revolutionary,
appear to have guided his conduct. At this period it might
have been possible to arrive at an understanding, or to obtain
satisfactory explanations, if the Roman Court would have told
him what points were at issue, what passages in his book were
impugned, and what were the grounds for suspecting them. If
there was on both sides a peaceful and conciliatory spirit, and
a desire to settle the problem, there was certainly a chance of
ciFecting it by a candid interchange of explanations. It was a
course which had proved efficacious on other occasions ; and in
the then recent discussion of Giinther's system it had been pur-
sued with great patience, and decided success.

Before giving a definite reply, therefore, Dr. Frohschammer
asked for information about the incriminated articles. This
would have given him an opportunity of seeing his error, and
making a submission in for o interno. But the request was re-

GTS Conflicts with Rome,

fused. It was a favour, he was told, sometimes extended to men
whose great services to the Church deserved such consideration,
but not to one who was hardly known except by the very book
which had incurred the censure. This answer instantly aroused
a suspicion that the Roman Court was more anxious to assert
its authority than to correct an alleged error, or to prevent a
scandal. It was well known that the mistrust of German phi-
losophy was very deep at Rome; and it seemed far from im-
possible that an intention existed to put it under all possible
restraint.

This mistrust on the part of the Roman divines was fully
equalled, and so far justified, by a corresponding literary con-
tempt on the part of many German Catholic scholars. It is
easy to understand the grounds of this feeling. The German
writers were ensrasjed in an arduous strus^gle in which their
antagonists were sustained by intellectual power, solid learn-
ing, and deep thought, such as the defenders of the Church
in Catholic countries have never had to encounter. In this
conflict the Italian divines could render no assistance. They
had shown themselves altogether incompetent to cope with
modern science. The Germans, therefore, unable to recognise
them as auxiliaries, soon ceased to regard them as equals, or as
scientific divines at all. Without impeaching their orthodoxy,
they learned to look on them as men incapable of understanding
and mastering the ideas of a literature so very remote from their
own, and to attach no more value to the unreasoned decrees of
their organ than to the undefended ipse dixit of a theologian of
secondary rank. This opinion sprang, not from national pre-
judice or from the self-appreciation of individuals comparing
their own works with those of the Roman divines, but from a
general view of the relation of those divines, among whom there
are several distinguished Germans, to the literature of Germany.
It was thus a corporate feeling, which might be shared even by
one who was conscious of his own inferiority, or who had written
nothing at all. Such a man, weighing the opinion of the theo-
logians of the Gesu and the Minerva, not in the scale of his
own performances, but in that of the great achievements of his
age, might well be reluctant to accept their verdict upon them
without some aid of argument and explanation.

On the other hand, it appeared that a blow which struck the
Catholic scholars of Germany would assure to the victorious
congregation of Roman divines an easy supremacy over the
writers of all other countries. The case of Dr. Frohschammer
might be made to test what degree of control it would be pos-
sible to exercise over his countrymen, the only body of writers
at whom alarm was felt, and who insisted, more than others, on

Conflicts ivith Home, 679

their freedom. But the suspicion of such a possibility was likely
only to confirm him in the idea that he was chosen to be the
experimental body on which an important principle was to be
decided, and that it was his duty, till his dogmatic error was
proved, to resist a questionable encroachment of authority upon
the rights of freedom. He therefore refused to make the preli-
minary submission which was required of him, and allowed the
decree to go forth against him in the usual way. Hereupon it
was intimated to him — though not by Rome — that he had in-
curred excommunication. This was the measure which raised
the momentous question of the liberties of Catholic science, and
gave the impulse to that new theory on the limits of authority
with which his name has become associated.

In the civil aifairs of mankind, it is necessary to assume that
the knowledge of the moral code and the traditions of law can-
not perish in a Christian nation. Particular authorities may
fall into error; decisions may be appealed against; laws may be
repealed. But the political conscience of the whole people can-
not be irrecoverably lost. The Church possesses the same pri-
vilege, but in a much higher degree ; for she exists expressly
for the purpose of preserving a definite body of truths, the
knowledge of which she can never lose. Whatever authority
therefore expresses that knowledge of which she is the keeper
must be obeyed. But there is no institution from which this
knowledge can be obtained with immediate certainty. A coun-
cil is not a priori oecumenical ; the Holy See is not separately
infallible. The one has to await a sanction ; the other has re-
peatedly erred. Every decree, therefore, requires a preliminary
examination.

A writer who is censured may in the first place yield an
external submission, either for the sake of discipline, or because
his conviction is too weak to support him against the weight of
authority. But if the question at issue is more important than
the preservation of peace, and if his conviction is strong, he en-
quires whether the authority which condemns him utters the voice
of the Church. If he finds that it does, he yields to it, or ceases to
profess the faith of Catholics. If he finds that it does not, but
is only the voice of authority, he owes it to his conscience, and
to the supreme claims of truth, to remain constant to that which
he believes, in spite of opposition. No authority has power to
impose error; and, if it resists the truth, the truth must be
upheld until it is admitted. Now the adversaries of Dr. Froh-
schammer had fallen into the monstrous error of attributing to
the Congregation of the Index a share in the infallibility of the
Church. He was placed in the position of a persecuted man;
and the general sympathy was with him. In his defence he

680 Conflicts with Rome,

proceeded to state his theory of the rights of science, in order
to vindicate the Church from the imputation of restricting its
freedom. Hitherto his works liad been written in defence of a
Christian philosophy against materiahsm and infidelity. Their
object had been thoroughly religious ; and although he was not
deeply read in ecclesiastical literature, and was often loose and
incautious in the use of theological terms, his writings had not
been wanting in catholicity of spirit. But after his condemna-
tion by Rome he undertook to pull down the power which had
dealt the blow, and to make himself safe for the future. In
this spirit of personal antagonism he commenced a long series of
writings in defence of freedom and in defiance of authority.

The following abstract marks, not so much the outline of his
system, as the logical steps which carried him to the point where
he passed beyond the limits of Catholicism. Religion, he taught,
supplies materials but no criterion for philosophy; philosophy
has nothing to rely on, in the last resort, but the unfailing
veracity of our nature, which is not corrupt or weak, but nor-
mally healthy, and unable to deceive us.^^ There is not greater
division or uncertainty in matters of speculation than on ques-
tions of faith. ^^ If at any time error or doubt should arise, the
science possesses in itself the means of correcting or removing
it, and no other remedy is efficacious but that which it applies
to itself. ^^ There can be no free philosophy if w^e must always
remember dogma.^^ Philosophy includes in its sphere all the
dogmas of revelation, as well as those of natural religion. It
examines by its own independent light the substance of every
Christian doctrine, and determines in each case whether it be
divine truth.^9 The conclusions and judgments at which it thus
arrives must be maintained even when they contradict articles
of faith.^^ As we accept the evidence of astronomy in opposi-
tion to the once settled opinion of divines, so we should not
shrink from the evidence of chemistry if it should be adverse to
transsubstantiation.-^ The Church, on the other hand, examines
these conclusions by her standard of faith, and decides whether
they can be taught in theology.^^ But she has no means of
ascertaining the philosophical truth of an opinion, and cannot
convict the philosopher of error. The two domains are as dis-
tinct as reason and faith ; and we must not identify what we
know with what we believe, but must separate the philosopher
from his philosophy. The system may be utterly at variance
with the whole teaching of Christianity, and yet the philosopher,

'* Naturphiloaophie, p. 115; Einleitung in die Philosophie, pp. 40, 54; Freiheit
der Wissenschaft, pp. 4, 89 ; Athendum, i. 17.

•^ AthenUum, i. 92. '7 Freiheit der Wissenschaft, p. 32.

»8 AthenUum, i. 167. '^ Einleitung, pp. 305, 317, 397.

^ Athendum, i. 208. « Ibid. ii. 655. '^- Ibid. ii. 676.

Conflicts with Rome. 681

while he holds it to be philosophically true and certain, may
continue to believe all Catholic doctrine, and to perform all the
spiritual duties of a layman or a priest. For discord cannot
exist between the certain results of scientific investigation and
the real doctrines of the Church. Both are true, and there is
no conflict of truths. But while the teaching of science is dis-
tinct and definite, that of the Church is subject to alteration.
Theology is at no time absolutely complete, but always liable
to be modified, and cannot therefore be made a fixed test of
truth.-^ Consequently there is no reason against the union of
the Churches. For the liberty of private judgment, which is
the formal principle of Protestantism, belongs to Catholics ; and
there is no actual Catholic dogma which may not lose all that
is objectionable to Protestants by the transforming process of
development."^

The errors of Dr. Frohschammer in these passages are not
exclusively his own. He has only drawn certain conclusions
from premisses which are very commonly received. Nothing is
more usual than to confound religious truth with the voice of
ecclesiastical authority. Dr. Frohschammer, having fallen into
this vulgar mistake, argues that because the authority is fallible
the truth must be uncertain. Many Catholics attribute to theo-
logical opinions which have prevailed for centuries without re-
proach a sacredness nearly approaching that w^hich belongs to
articles of faith : Dr. Frohschammer extends to defined dogmas
the liability to change which belongs to opinions that yet aw^ait a
final and conclusive investigation. Thousands of zealous men are
persuaded that a conflict may arise between defined doctrines of
the Church and conclusions which are certain according to all
the tests of science : Dr. Frohschammer adopts this view, and
argues that none of the decisions of the Church are final, and
that consequently in such a case they must give way. Lastly,
uninstructed men commonly impute to historical and natural
science the uncertainty which is inseparable from pure specula-
tion: Dr. Frohschammer accepts the equality, but claims for
metaphysics the same certainty and independence which those
sciences possess.

Having begun his course in company with many who have
exactly opposite ends in view. Dr. Frohschammer, in a recent
tract on the union of the Churches, entirely separates himself
from the Catholic Church in his theory of development. He
had received the impulse to his new system from the opposition
of those whom he considered the advocates of an excessive uni-
formity, and the enemies of progress ; and their contradiction

23 Atheniium, ii. 661.

^ Wiedervereiniyung der Katholiken und Frotestanten, pp. 26, 35.

682 ' Conflicts with Rome,

Las driven him to a point where he entirely sacrifices unity to
change. He now affirms that our Lord desired no unity or
perfect conformity among His followers, except in morals and
charity;-^ that He gave no definite system of doctrine; and that
the form which Christian faith may have assumed in a particu-
lar age has no validity for all future time, but is subject to con-
tinual modification."^ The definitions, he says, which the Church
has made from time to time are not to be obstinately adhered
to ; and the advancement of religious knowledge is obtained by
genius, not by learning, and is not regulated by traditions and
fixed rules.'-^ He maintains that not only the form bvit the
substance varies; that the belief of one age may be not only
extended but abandoned in another ; and that it is Impossible to
draw the line which separates immutable dogma from undecided
opinions.^^

The causes which drove Dr. Frohschammer into heresy would
scarcely have deserved great attention from the mere merit of
the man; for he cannot be acquitted of having, in the first
instance, exhibited very superficial notions of theology. Their
instructiveness consists in the conspicuous example they afford
of the eflPect of certain errors which at the present day are com-
monly held and rarely contradicted. When he found himself
censured unjustly, as he thought, by the Holy See, it should
have been enough for him to believe in his conscience that he
was in agreement with the true faith of the Church. He would
not then have proceeded to consider the whole Church infected
with the liability to err from which her rulers are not exempt,
or to degrade the fundamental truths of Christianity to the level
of mere school opinions. Authority appeared in his eyes to
stand for the whole Church ; and therefore. In endeavouring to
shield himself from its influence, he abandoned the first principles
of the ecclesiastical system. Far from having aided the cause
of freedom, his errors have provoked a reaction against it, which
must be looked upon with deep anxiety, and of which the first
significant symptom remains to be described.

On the 21st of December 1863 the Pope addressed a Brief
to the Archbishop of Munich, which was published on the 5th
of March. This document^^ explains that the Holy Father had
originally been led to suspect the recent congress at Munich
of a tendency similar to that of Frohschammer, and had con-
sequently viewed it with great distrust ; but that these feelings
were removed by the address which was adopted at the meet-
ing, and by the report of the Archbishop. And he expresses the

" Wiedervereinigung, pp. 8, 10.

26 p. 15, =7 p. 21. ^ pp. 25, 26.

^ The document is printed in full at the end of this article.

Covjlicts with Rome, 683

consolation he has derived from the principles which prevailed
in the assembly, and applauds the design of those by whom it
w^as convened. He asks for the opinion of the German prelates,
in order to be able to determine whether, in the present cir-
cumstances of their Church, it is right that the congress should
be renewed.

Besides the censure of the doctrines of Frohschammer, and
the approbation given to the acts of the Munich congress, the
Brief contains passages of deeper and more general import, not
directly touching the action of the German divines, but having
an important bearing on the position of this Eeview. The sub-
stance of these passages is as follows : — In the present condition
of society the supreme authority in the Church is more than ever
necessary, and must not surrender in the smallest degree the
exclusive direction of ecclesiastical knowledge. An entire obe-
dience to the decrees of the Holy See and the Eoman congre-
gations cannot be inconsistent w^ith the freedom and progress
of science. The disposition to find fault with the scholastic
theology, and to dispute the conclusions and the method of its
teachers, threatens the authority of the Church, because the
Church has not only allowed theology to remain for centuries
faithful to their system, but has urgently recommended it as the
safest bulwark of the faith, and an efficient weapon against her
enemies. Catholic writers are not bound only by those decisions
of the infallible Church which regard articles of faith. They
must also submit to the theological decisions of the Roman Con-
gregations, and to the opinions which are commonly received
in the schools. And it is wrong, though not heretical, to reject
those decisions or opinions.

In a word, therefore, the Brief affirms that the common
opinions and explanations of Catholic divines ought not to yield
to the progress of secular science, and that the course of theo-
logical knowledge ought to be controlled by the decrees of the
Index.

There is no doubt that the letter of this document might be
interpreted in a sense consistent with the habitual language of
The Home and Foreign Revieiu. On the one hand, the censure
is evidently aimed at that exaggerated claim of independence
which would deny to the Pope and the Episcopate any right of
interfering in literature, and would transfer the whole weight
heretofore belonging to the traditions of the schools of theology
to the incomplete, and therefore uncertain, conclusions of mo-
dern science. On the other hand, the Review has always main-
tained, in common with all Catholics, that if the one Church has
an organ it is through that organ that she must speak ; that her
authority is not limited to the precise sphere of her infallibility;

684 Covflicts with Rome,

and that opinions which she has long tolerated or approved, and
has for centuries found compatible with the secular as well as
religious knowledge of the age, cannot be lightly supplanted by
new hypotheses of scientific men, which have not yet had time
to prove their consistency with dogmatic truth. But such a
plausible accommodation, even if it were honest or dignified,
would only disguise and obscure those ideas which it has been
the chief object of the Keview to proclaim. It is therefore not
only more respectful to the Holy See, but more serviceable to
the principles of the Review itself, and more in accordance with
the spirit in which it has been conducted, to interpret the words
of the Pope as they were really meant, than to elude their con-
sequences by subtle distinctions, and to profess a formal adop-
tion of maxims which no man who holds the principles of the
Keview can accept in their intended signification.

One of these maxims is that theological and other opinions
long held and allov/ed in the Church gather truth from time,
and an authority in some sort binding from the implied sanc-
tion of the Holy See, so that they cannot be rejected without
rashness ; and that the decrees of the Congregation of the Index
possess an authority quite independent of the acquirements
of the men composing it. This is no new opinion ; it is only
expressed on the present occasion with unusual solemnity and
distinctness. But one of the essential principles of this Review
consists in a clear recognition, first, of the infinite gulf which
in theology separates what is of faith from what is not of faith,
— revealed dogmas from opinions unconnected with them by
logical necessity, and therefore incapable of any thing higher
than a natural certainty, — and next, of the practical difference
which exists in ecclesiastical discipline between the acts of
infallible authority and those which possess no higher sanction
than that of canonical legality. That which is not decided
with dogmatic infallibility is for the time susceptible only of a
scientific determination, which advances with the progress of
science, and becomes absolute only where science has attained
its final results. On the one hand, this scientific progress is
beneficial, and even necessary, to the Church ; on the other,
it must inevitably be opposed by the guardians of traditional
opinion, to whom, as such, no share in it belongs, and who by
their own acts and those of their predecessors are committed to
views which it menaces or destroys. The same principle which,
in certain conjunctures, imposes the duty of surrendering re-
ceived opinions imposes in equal extent, and under like con-
ditions, the duty of disregarding the fallible authorities that
uphold them.

It is the design of the Holy See not, of course, to deny

I

Conflicts tvith Rome. 685

the distinction between dogma and opinion, upon which this
duty is founded, but to reduce tlie practical recognition of it
among Catholics to the smallest potfsible limits. A grave ques-
tion therefore arises as to the position of a He view founded in
great part for the purpose of exemplifying this distinction.^*^
In considering the solution of this question two circumstances
must be borne in mind : first, that the antagonism now so
forcibly expressed has always been known and acknowledged ;
and secondly, that no part of the Brief applies directly to the
Review. The Review was as distinctly opposed to the Roman
sentiment before the Brief as since ; and it is still as free from
censure as before. It was at no time in virtual sympathy with
authority on the points in question; and it is not now in formal
conflict with authority.

But the definlteness with w^iich the Holy See has pronounced
its will, and the fact that it has taken the initiative, seem posi-
tively to invite adhesion, and to convey a special warning to
all who have expressed opinions contrary to the maxims of tlie
Brief. A periodical which not only has done so, but exists in
a measure for the purpose of doing so, cannot with propriety
refuse to survey the new position in which it is placed by this
important act. For the conduct of a Review involves more
delicate relations \Yith the government of the Church than
the authorship of an isolated book. When opinions which
an author defends are rejected at Rome, he either makes his
submission, or, if his mind remains unaltered, silently leaves
his book to take its chance, and to influence men according to
its merits. But such passivity, however right and seemly in
the author of a book, is inapplicable to the case of a Review.
The periodical iteration of rejected propositions would amount
to insult and defiance, and would probably provoke more de-
finite measures; and thus the result would be to commit autho-
rity yet more irrevocably to an opinion which otherwise might
take no deep root, and might yield ultimately to the influence
of time. For it is hard to surrender a cause on behalf of which
a struggle has been sustained, and spiritual evils have been in-
flicted. In an isolated book, the author need discuss no more
topics than he likes, and any want of agreement with ecclesi-
astical authority may receive so little prominence as to excite

^ The prospectus of the Review contained these words : '* It will abstain
from direct theological discussion, as far as external circumstances will allow:
and in dealing with those mixed questions into which theology indirectly enters,
its aim will be to combine devotion to the Church with discrimination and can-
dour in the treatment of her opponents ; to reconcile freedom of enquiry with
implicit faith ; and to discountenance what is untenable and unreal, without for-
getting the tenderness due to the weak, or the reverence rightly claimed for
what is sacred. Submitting without reserve to infallible authority, it will en-
courage a habit of manly investigation on subjects of scientific interest."

686 Conflicts with Rome,

no attention. But a continuous Review whicli adopted this
kind of reserve would give a negative prominence to the topics
it persistently avoided, and by thus keeping before the world
the position it occupied would hold out a perpetual invitation
to its readers to judge between the Church and itself. What-
ever it gained of approbation and assent would be so much lost
to the authority and dignity of the Holy See. It could only
hope to succeed by trading on the scandal it caused.

But in reality its success could no longer advance the cause
of truth. For what is the Holy See in its relation to the
masses of Catholics, and where does its strength lie? It is
the organ, the mouth, the head, of the Church. Its strength
consists in its agreement with the general conviction of the
faithful. When it expresses the common knowledge and sense
of the age, or of a large majority of Catholics, its position is
impregnable. The force it derives from this general support
makes direct opposition hopeless, and therefore disedifying,
tending only to division, and promoting reaction rather than
reform. The influence by which it is to be moved must be
directed first on that which gives it strength, and must pervade
the members in order that it may reach the head. While the
general sentiment of Catholics is unaltered, the course of the
Holy See remains unaltered too. As soon as that sentiment is M
modified, Home sympathises with the change. The ecclesiastical "J
government, based upon the public opinion of the Church, and
acting through it, cannot separate itself from the mass of the
faithful, and keep pace with the progress of the instructed
minority. It follows slowly and warily, and sometimes begins by
resisting and denouncing what in the end it thoroughly adopts.
Hence a direct controversy with Rome holds out the prospect of
great evils, and at best a barren and unprofitable victory. The
victory that is fruitful springs from that gradual change in the
knowledge, the ideas, and the convictions, of the Catholic body,
which, in due time, overcomes the natural reluctance to forsake
a beaten path, and by insensible degrees constrains the mouth-
piece of tradition to conform itself to the new atmosphere with
■which it is surrounded. The slow, silent, indirect action of
public opinion bears the Holy See along, without any demoral-
ising conflict or dishonourable capitulation. This action it be-
longs essentially to the graver scientific literature to direct; and
the enquiry what form that literature should assume at any
given moment involves no question which aflects its substance,
though it may often involve questions of moral fitness suf-
ficiently decisive for a particular occasion.

It was never pretended that The Home and Foreign Review
represented the opinions of the majority of Catholics. The

Covjllcts with Home. 687

Holy See has had their support in maintaining a view of the
obligations of Catholic literature very diiferent from the one
which has been upheld in these pages ; nor could it explicitly
abandon that view Avithout taking up a new position in the
Church. All that could be hoped for on the other side was
silence and forbearance; and for a time they have been con-
ceded. But this is the case no longer. The toleration has now
been pointedly withdrawn ; and the adversaries of the Roman
theory have been challenged with the summons to submit.

If the opinions for wliich submission is claimed were new,
or if the opposition now signalised were one of which there had
hitherto been any doubt, a question might have arisen as to
the limits of the authority of the Holy See over the conscience,
and the necessity or possibility of accepting the view which it
propounds. But no problem of this kind has in fact presented
itself for consideration. The differences which are now pro-
claimed have all along been acknowledged to exist; and the
Conductors of this Review are unable to yield their assent to
the opinions put forward in the Brief.

In these circumstances, there are two courses which it is
impossible to take. It would be wrong to abandon principles
which have been well considered and are sincerely held, and it
would also be wrong to assail the authority which contradicts
them. The principles have not ceased to be true, nor the au-
thority to be legitimate, because the two are in contradiction.
To submit the intellect and conscience without examining the
reasonableness and justice of this decree, or to reject the au-
thority on the ground of its having been abused, would equally
be a sin, on one side against morals, on the other against faith.
The conscience cannot be relieved by casting on the adminis-
trators of ecclesiastical discipline the whole responsibility of
preserving religious truth ; nor can it be emancipated by a vir-
tual apostasy. For the Church is neither a despotism in which
the convictions of the faithful possess no power of expressing
themselves and no means of exercising a legitimate control,
nor is it an organised anarchy where the judicial and adminis-
trative powers are destitute of that authority which is con-
ceded to them in civil society — the authority which commands
submission even where it cannot impose a conviction of the
righteousness of its acts.

No Catholic can contemplate without alarm the evil that
would be caused by a Catholic journal persistently labouring to
thwart the published will of the Holy See, and continuously
defying its authority. The Conductors of this Review refuse
to take upon themselves the responsibility of such a position.
And if it were accepted, the Review would represent no section

688 Conflicts with Rome.

of Catholics. But the representative character is as essential
to it as the opinions it professes, or the literary resources it
commands. There is no lack of periodical publications re-
presenting science apart from religion, or religion apart from
science. The distinctive feature of The Home and Foreign
Review has been that it has attempted to exhibit the two in
union ; and the interest which has been attached to its views
proceeded from the fact that they were put forward as essen-
tially Catholic in proportion to their scientific truth, and as
expressing more faithfully than even the voice of authority the
genuine spirit of the Church in relation to intellect. Its object
has been to elucidate the harmony which exists between reli-
gion and the established conclusions of secular knowledge, and
to exhibit the real amity and sympathy between the methods of
science and the methods employed by the Church. That amity
and sympathy the enemies of the Church refuse to admit, and
her friends have not learned to understand. Long disowned
by a large part of our Episcopate, they are now rejected by the
Holy See ; and the issue is vital to a Review which in ceasing
to uphold them would surrender the whole reason of its exist-
ence.

Warned, therefore, by the language of the Brief, I will not
provoke ecclesiastical authority to a more explicit repudiation
of doctrines which are necessary to secure its influence upon
the advance of modern science. I will not challenge a conflict
which would only deceive the world into a belief that religion
cannot be harmonised with all that is right and true in tin
progress of the present age. But I will sacrifice the existenc(
of the Beview to the defence of its principles, in order that
may combine the obedience which is due to legitimate eccle-
siastical authority with an equally conscientious maintenance of
the rightful and necessary liberty of thought. A conjuncture
like the present does not perplex the conscience of a Catholic ;J'
for his obligation to refrain from wounding the peace of the
Church is neither more nor less real than that of professing
nothinor beside or afirainst his convictions. If these duties have
not been always understood, at least The Home and Foreign
Review will not betray them ; and the cause it has imperfectly
expounded can be more eflftciently served in future by means
which will neither weaken the position of authority nor depend
for their influence on its approval.

If, as I have heard, but now am scarcely anxious to believe,
there are those, both in the communion of the Church and out
of it, who have found comfort in the existence of this Review,
and have watched its straight short course with hopeful interest,

Conflicts with Rome. 689

trusting it as a sign that the knowledge deposited in their minds by-
study, and transformed by conscience into inviolable convictions,
was not only tolerated among Catholics, but might be reasonably
held to be of the very essence of their system ; who were willing
to accept its principles as a possible solution of the difficulties
they saw in Catholicism, and were even prepared to make its fate
the touchstone of the real spirit of our hierarchy ; or who deemed
that while it lasted it promised them some immunity from the
overwhelming pressure of uniformity, some safeguard against
resistance to the growth of knowledge and of freedom, and some
protection for themselves, since, however weak its influence as
an auxiliary, it would, by its position, encounter the first shock,
and so divert from others the censures which they apprehended;
who have found a welcome encouragement in its confidence, a
satisfaction in its sincerity when they shrank from revealing
their own thoughts, or a salutary restraint when its moderation
failed to satisfy their ardour ; whom, not being Catholics, it has
induced to think less hardly of the Church, or, being Catholics,
has bound more strongly to her ; — to all these I would say that
the principles it has upheld will not die with it, but will find
their destined advocates, and triumph in their appointed time.
From the beginning of the Church it has been a law of her
nature, that the truths which eventually proved themselves the
legitimate products of her doctrine have had to make their slow
way upwards through a phalanx of hostile habits and traditions,
and to be rescued, not only from open enemies, but also from
friendly hands that were not worthy to defend them. It is
right that in every arduous enterprise some one who stakes no
influence on the issue should make the first essay, whilst the
true champions, like the Triarii of the Roman legions, are
behind, and wait, without wavering, until the crisis calls them
forward.

And already it seems to have arrived. All that is being
done for ecclesiastical learning by the priesthood of the Con-
tinent bears testimony to the truths which are now called in
question ; and every work of real science written by a Catholic
adds to their force. The example of great writers aids their
cause more powerfully than many theoretical discussions. In-
deed, Avhcn the principles of the antagonism which divides
Catholics have been brought clearly out, the part of theory is
accomplished, and most of the work of a Review is done. It
remains that the principles which have been made intelligible
should be translated into practice, and should pass from the
arena of discussion into the ethical code of literature. In that
shape their efficacy will be acknowledged, and they will cease
to be the object of alarm. Those who have been indignant at

690

Conflicts with Rome.

hearing that their methods are obsolete, and their labours vain,
will be taught by experience to recognise in the works of an-
other school services to religion more momentous than those
which they themselves have aspired to perform ; practice will
compel the assent which is denied to theory; and men will
learn to value in the fruit what the germ did not reveal to
them. Therefore it is to the prospect of that development
of Catholic learning which is too powerful to be arrested or
repressed that I would direct the thoughts of those who are
tempted to yield either to a malignant joy or an unjust de-
spondency at the language of the Holy See. If the spirit of
The Home and Foreign Revieiu really animates those whose
sympathy it enjoyed, neither their principles, nor their con-
fidence, nor their hopes, will be shaken by its extinction. It
was but a partial and temporary embodiment of an imperishable
idea — the faint reflection of a light which still lives and burns
in the hearts of the silent thinkers of the Church.

JOHN DALBERG ACTOX.

[ 691 ]

Venerabili Fratn Gregorio ArcMepiscopo Monacensi et
Frisingensi

PIVS PP. IX.

Venerabilis Frater, Salutem et Apostollcam Benedictionem.
Tuas libenter accepimus Litteras, die 7. proxime elapsi men-
sis Octobris datas, ut Nos certiores faceres de Conventu in
ista Monacensi civitate proximo mense Septembri a nonnullis
Germaniae Theologis doctisque catholicis viris habito de variis
arguraentis, quae ad theologicas praesertim ac philosophicas
tradendas disciplinas pertinent. Ex Litteris Tibi Nostro jussu
scriptis a Venerabili Fratre Matthaeo Archiepiscopo Neocae-
sariensi Nostro, et Apostolicae hujus Sedis apud istam Re-
giam Aulam JSfuntio vel facile noscere potuisti, Venerabilis
Frater, quibus Nos sensibus affecti fuerimus, ubi primum de
hoc proposito Conventu nuntium accepimus et postquam agno-
vimus, quomodo commemorati Theologi, et viri ad hujusmodi
Conventum invitati et congregati fuere. Nihil certe dubi-
tare volebamus de laudabili fine, quo hujus Conventus auctores,
fautoresque permoti fuere, ut scilicet omnes Catholici viri doc-
trina praestantes, collatis consiliis, conjunctisque viribus, ger-
manam catholicae Ecclesiae scientiam promoverent, eamque a
nefariis, ac perniciosissimis tot adversariorum opinionibus, co-
natibusque vindicarent ac defenderent. Sed in hac sublimi
Principis Apostolorum Cathedra licet immerentes collocati as-
perrimis hisce temporibus, quibus Sacrorum Antistitum auc-
toritas, si unquam alias, ad unitatem et integritatem catholicae
doctrinae custodiendam, vel maxime est necessaria, et ab omni-
bus sarta tecta servari debet, non potuimus non vehementer
mirari videntes memorati Conventus invitationem privato no-
mine factara et promulgatam, quin uUo modo intercederet
impulsus, auctoritas, et missio ecclesiasticae potestatis, ad quam
proprio, ac nativo jure unice pertinet advigilare ac dirigere
theologicarum praesertim rerum doctrinam. Quae sane res, ut
optime noscis, omnino nova, ac prorsus inusitata in Ecclesia est.
Atque iccirco voluimus, Te, Venerabilis Frater, noscere banc
Nostram fuisse sententiam, ut cum a Te, tum ab aliis Vene-
rabilibus Fratribus Sacrorum in Germania Antistitibus probe
judicari posset de scopo per Conventus programma enuntiato,
si nempe talis esset, ut veram Ecclesiae utilitatem afferret.
Eodem autem tempore certi eramus, Te, Venerabilis Frater,
pro pastorali Tua soUicitudine ac zelo omnia consilia et studia
esse adhibiturum, ne in eodem Conventu tum catholicae fidei
ac doctrinae integritas, tum obediential quam omnes cujusque

VOL. IV. z z

I 692 j

classls et conditionis cathollci homines Ecclesiae auctoritati ac
maglsterio praestare omnino debent, vel minimum detrimentum
caperent. Ac dissimulare non possumus, non levibus Nos an-
gustiis affectos fuisse, quandoquidem verebamur, ne hujusmodi
Conventu sine ecclesiastica auctoritate congregate exemplum
praeberetur sensim usurpandi aliquid ex jure ecclesiastici regi-
minis, et authentic! magisterii, quod divina institutione proprium
est Romano Pontifici, et Episcopis in unione et consensione cum
ipso S. Petri Successore, atque ita, ecclesiastico ordine pertur-
bato, aliquando unitas, et obedientia fidei apud aliquos labefac-
taretur. Atque etiam timebamus, ne in ipso Conventu quaedam
enunciarentur, ac tenerentur opiniones et placita, quae in vulgus
praesertim emissa et catholicae doctrinae puritatem, et debitam
subjectionem in periculum ac discrimen vocarent. Sumrao
enim animi Nostri dolore record abamur, Venerabilis Frater,
hanc Apostolicam Sedem pro gravissimi sui muneris officio
debuisse ultimis hisce temporibus censura notare, ac prohibere
nonnullorum Germaniae Scriptorum opera, qui cum nescirent
decedere ab aliquo principio, seu methodo falsae scientiae, aut
hodiernae fallacis philosophiae, praeter voluntatem, uti confidi-
mus, inducti fuere ad proferendas ac docendas doctrinas dissen-
tientes a vero nonnullorum sanctissimae fidei nostrae dogmatum
sensu et interpretatione, quique errores ab Ecclesia jam dam-
natos e tenebris excitarunt, et propriam divinae revelationis et
fidei indolem et naturam in alienum omnino sensum explica-
verunt. Noscebamus etiam, Venerabilis Frater, nonnullos ex
catholicis, qui severioribus disciplinis excolendis operam navant,
humani ingenii viribus nimium fidentes errorum periculis baud
fuisse absterritos, ne in asserenda fallaci, et minime sincera
scientiae libertate abriperentur ultra limites, quos praetergredi
non sinit obedientia debita erga magisterium Ecclesiae ad totius
revelatae veritatis integritatem servandam divinitus institutum.
Ex quo evenit, ut hujusmodi catholici misere decepti et iis
saepe consentiant, qui contra hujus Apostolicae Sedis, ac Nos-
trarum Congregationum decreta declamant, ac blaterant, ea
liberum scientiae progressum impedire, et periculo se exponunt
sacra ilia frangendi obedientiae vincula, quibus ex Dei volun-
tate eidem Apostolicae huic obstringuntur Sedi, quae a Deo
ipso veritatis magistra, et vindex fuit constituta. Neque ig-
norabamus, in Germania etiam falsam invaluisse opinionem
adversus veterem scholam, et adversus doctrinam summorum
illorum Doctorum, quos propter admirabilem eorum sapientiam,
et vitae sanctitatem universalis veneratur Ecclesia. Qua falsa
opinione ipsius Ecclesiae auctoritas in discrimen vocatur, quan-
doquidem ipsa Ecclesia non solum per tot contincntia eaecula
permisit, ut ex eorumdem Doctorum methodo, et ex principiis

[ 693 ]

communi omnium catliolicarum scliolarum consensu sancitis
theologica excoleretur scientia, verum etiam saepissime summis
laudibus theologicam eorum doctrinam extulit, illamque veluti
fortissimum fidei propugnaculum et formidanda contra suos
inimicos arma vehementer commendavit. Haec sane omnia
pro gravissimi supremi Nostri Apostolici ministerii munere, ac
pro singulari illo amore, quo omnes Germaniae catholicos caris-
simani Dominici gregis partem prosequimur, Nostrum solli-
citabant et angebant animum tot aliis pressum angustiis, ubi,
accepto memorati Conventus nuntio, res supra expositas Tibi
significandas curavimus. Postquam vero per brevissimum nun-
tium ad Nos relatum fuit, Te, Venerabilis Frater, hujusce Con-
ventus auctorum precibus annuentem tribuisse veniam cele-
brandi eumdem Conventum, ac sacrum solemni ritu peregisse,
et consultationes in eodem Conventu juxta catholicae Ecclesiae
doctrinam habitas fuisse, et postquam ipsius Conventus viri per
eumdem nuntium Apostolicam Nostram imploraverunt Bene-
dictionem, nulla interposita mora, piis illorum votis obsecun-
davimus. Summa vero anxietate Tuas expectabamus Litteras,
ut a Te, Venerabilis Frater, accuratissime noscere possemus ea
omnia, quae ad eumclem Conventum quovis modo possent per-
tinere. Nunc autem cum a Te acceperimus, quae scire vel
maxime cupiebamus, ea spe nitimur fore, ut hujusmodi nego-
tium, quemadmodum asseris, Deo auxiliante, in majorem catho-
licae in Germania Ecclesiae utilitatem cedat. Equidem cum
omnes ejusdem Conventus viri, veluti scribis, asseruerint, scien-
tiarum progressum, et felicem exitum in devitandis ac refu-
tandis miserrimae nostrae aetatis erroribus omnino pendere ab
intima erga veritates revelatas adhaesione, quas catholica docet
Ecclesia, ipsi noverunt, ac professi sunt illam veritatem, quam
veri catholici scientiis excolendis et evolvendis dediti semper
tenuere, ac tradiderunt. Atque hac veritate innixi potuerunt
ipsi sapientes, ac veri catholici viri scientias easdem tuto exco-
lere, explanare, easque utiles certasque reddere. Quod quidem
obtineri non potest, si humanae rationis lumen finibus circum-
scriptum eas quoque veritates investigando, quas propriis viri-
bus et facultatibus assequi potest, non veneretur maxime, ut
par est, infallibile et increatum Divini intellectus lumen, quod
in Christiana revelatione undique mirifice elucet. Quamvis enim
naturales illae disciplinae suis propriis ratione cognitis principiis
nitantur, catholici tamen earum cultores divinam revelationem
veluti rectricem stellam prae oculis habeant oportet, qua prae-
lucente sibi a syrtibus et erroribus caveant, ubi in suis investi-
gationibus, et commentationibus animadvertant posse se illis
adduci, ut saepissime accidit, ad ea proferenda, quae plus mi-
nusve adversentur infallibili rerum veritati, quae a Deo reve-

[ 694 ]

latae fuere. Hinc dubltare nolumus, quin ipsius Conventus
viri commemoratam veritatem noscentes, ac profitentes uno
eodemque tempore plane reiicere ac reprobare voluerint recen-
tem illam ac praeposteram philosophandi rationem, quae etiamsi
divinam revelationem veluti historicum factum admittat, tamen
inefFabiles veritates ab ipsa divina revelatione propositas hu-
man ae rationis investigationibus supponit, perinde ac si illae
veritates rationi subiectae essent, vel ratio suis viribus et prin-
cipiis posset consequi intelligentiam et scientiara omnium su-
pernarum sanctissimae fidei nostrae veritatum, et mysteriorum,
quae ita supra humanam rationem sunt, ut haec nunquam
effici possit idonea ad ilia suis viribus, et ex naturalibus suis
principiis intelligenda, aut demonstranda. Eiusdem vero Con-
ventus viros debitis prosequimur laudibus, proptereaquod reii-
cientes, uti existimamus, falsam inter philosophum et pbilo-
sophiam distinctionem, de qua in aliis Nostris Litteris ad Te
scriptis loquuti sumus, noverunt, et asseruerunt, omnes catho-
licos in doctis suis commentationibus debere ex conscientia
dogmaticis infallibilis catholicae Ecclesiae ob'edire decretis.
Dum vero debitas illis deferimus laudes, quod professi sint veri-
tatem, quae ex catholicae fidei obligatione necessario oritur,
persuadere Nobis volumus, noluisse obligationem, qua catholic!
Magistri, ac Scriptores omnino adstringuntur, coarctare in iis
tantum, quae ab infallibili Ecclesiae iudicio, veluti fidei dogmata
ab omnibus credenda proponuntur. Atque etiam Nobis per-
suademus, ipsos noluisse declarare, perfectam illam erga re-
velatas veritates adhaesionem, quam agnoverunt necessariam
omnino esse ad verum scientiarum progressum assequendum, et
ad errores confutandos, obtineri posse, si tumtaxat Dogmatibus
ab Ecclesia expresse definitis fides, et obsequium adhibeatur.
Namque etiamsi ageretur de ilia subiectione, quae fidei divinae
actu est praestanda, limitanda tamen non esset ad ea, quae
expressis oecumenicorum Conciliorum, aut Romanorum Ponti-
ficuni, huiusque Apostolicae Sedis decretis definita sunt, sed
ad ea quoque extendenda quae ordinario totius Ecclesiae per
orbem dispersae magisterio tamquam divinitus revelata tra-
duntur, ideoque universali et constanti consensu a catholicis
Theologis ad fidem pertinere retinentur. Sed cum agatur de
ilia subiectione, qua ex conscientia ii omnes catholici obstrin-
guntur, qui in contemplatrices scientias incumbunt, ut novas
suis scriptis Ecclesiae aiFerant utilitates, iccirco eiusdem Con-
ventus viri recognoscere debent, sapientibus catholicis baud satis
esse, ut praefata Ecclesiae dogmata recipiant ac venerentur,
verum etiam opus esse, ut se subiiciant turn decisioniJDus, quae
ad doctrinam pertinentes a Pontificiis Congrcgationibus pro-
feruntur, turn iis doctrinae capitibus, quae communi et constanti

[ 695 ]

Catholicorum consensu retinentur, ut theologicae veritates et
conclusiones ita certae, ut opiniones eisdem cloctrinae capitibus
adversae quamquani haereticae dici nequeant, tamen aliam
theologicam mereantur censuram. Itaque haud existimamus
viros, qui commemorato Monacensi interfuere Conventui, uUo
modo potuisse, aut voluisse obstare doctrina nuper expositae,
quae ex verae theologiae principiis in Ecclesia retinetur, quin
immo ea fiducia sustentamur fore, ut ipsi in severioribus ex-
colendis disciplinis velint ad enunciatae doctrinae normam se
diligenter conformare. Quae Nostra fiducia praesertim nititur
lis Litteris, quas per Te, Venerabilis Prater, Nobis miserunt.
Siquidem eisdem Litteris cum summa animi Nostri consolatione
ipsi profitentur, sibi in cogendo Conventu mentem nunquam
fuisse, vel minimam sibi arrogare auctoritatem, quae ad Eccle-
siam omnino pertinet, ac simul testantur, noluisse, eundem
dimittere Conventum, quin prim urn declararent summam ob-
servantiam, obedientiam, ac filialem pietatem, qua Nos et
banc Petri cathedram catholicae unitatis centrum prosequun-
tur. Cum igitur hisce sensibus supremam Nostram, et Apos-
tolicae huius Sedis potestatem, auctoritatemque ipsi recognos-
cant, ac simul intelligant, gravissimum officium Nobis ab ipso
Christo Domino commissum regendi, ac. moderandi universam
suam Ecclesiam, ac pascendi omnem suum gregem salutaris
doctrinae pascuis, et continenter advigilandi, ne sanctissima
fides, eiusque doctrina ullum unquam detrimentum patiatur,
dubitare non possumus, quin ipsi severioribus disciplinis exco-
lendis, tradendis, sanaeque doctrinae tuendae operam navantes
uno, eodemque tempore agnoscant, se debere et religiose ex-
sequi regulas ab Ecclesia semper servatas, et obedire omnibus
decretis, quae circa doctrinam a Suprema Nostra Pontificia
auctoritate eduntur. Haec autem omnia Tibi communicamus,
ac summopere optamus, ut ea iis omnibus significes viris, qui in
memorato Conventu fuere, dum, si opportunum esse censueri-
mus, haud omittemus alia Tibi, et Venerabilibus Pratribus
Germaniae Sacrorum Antistitibus hac super re significare, post-
quam Tuam, et eorumdem Antistitum sententiam intellexeri-
mus de huiusmodi Conventuum opportunitate. Demum pas-
toralem Tuam soUicitudinem, ac vigilantiam iterum vehementer
excitamus, ut una cum aliis Venerabilibus Pratribus Sacrorum
in Germania Antistitibus curas omnes, cogitationesque in tuen-
dam et propagandam sanam doctrinam assidue conferas. Neque
omittas omnibus inculcare, ut prof anas omnes novitates dili-
genter devitent, neque ab illis se decipi unquam patiantur, qui
falsam scientiae libertatem, eiusque non solum verum profec-
tum, sed etiam errores tamquam progressus irapudenter iactant.
Atque pari studio et contentione ne desinas omnes hortari, ut

[ 696 ]

maxima cura, et industria in veram christianam et catholicara
sapientiam incumbant, atque, uti par est, in summo pretio
habeant veros solidosque scientiae progressus, qui, sanctisslma
ac divina fide duce et magistra, in catholicis scholis habiti fue-
runt, utque theologicas praesertim disciplinas excolant secun-
dum principia, et constantes doctrinas, quibus unaniraiter innixi
sapientissimi Doctores immortalem sibi nominis laudem, et
maximam Ecclesiae, et scientiae utilitatem, ac splendorem pe-
pererunt Hoc sane modo catholici viri in scientiis excolendis
poterunt, Deo auxiliante, magis in dies quantum homini fas est,
noscere, evolvere, et explanare veritatura thesaurum, quas in na-
turae et gratiae operibus Deus posuit, ut homo postquam illas
rationis et fidei lumine noverit, suamque vitam ad eas sedulo
conformaverit, possit in aeternae gloriae claritate summam
veritatem, Deum scilicet, sine ullo velamine intueri, Eoque
felicissime in aeternum perfrui et gaudere. Hanc autem oc-
casionem libentissirao animo amplectimur, ut denuo testemur
et confirmemus praecipuam Nostram in Te caritatem. Cuius
quoque pignus esse volumus Apostolicam Benedictionem, quam
efFuso cordis affectu Tibi ipsi, Venerabilis Frater, et gregi Tuae
curae commisso peramanter impertimus.

Datum Komae apud S. Petrum die 21. Decembris Anno
1863.

Pontificatus Nostri Anno Decimoctavo

PIUS PP. IX.

[ 697 ]

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.

1. Ueber die Quellen zum Leben des Confucius , namentlich seine sog»

Hausgesprdche (Kta-iu). Von Dr. John Heinr. Plath, Munclien.
(Aus den Sitzungsbericliten der k. b. Akademie des Wissen-
schaften.)

2. Yu Kiao Li. Les Deux cousineSj Boman chinois. Traduction nou-

velle, accompagnee d*un Commentaire philologique et historique,
par Stanislas Julien, Membre de I'lnstitut, Professeur de Langue
et de Litterature ckinoise, Commandeur de la Legion d'tlonneur,
etc. etc. (Paris : Didier.)

3. Indische Spruche : Sanskrit und Dmtsch, Herausgegeben von Otto

Bohtlingk. Erster Theil. (St. Petersb^lrg.)

4. Dei Tentativi fatti per spiegare le antiche Lingue Italiche e special-

mente V Etrusca. Saggio storico-critico di Pietro Risi, Professore
di Lettere Latine et Greche nel R. Liceo di San Remo. (Milano :
Francesco Villardi.)

5. An elementary Grammar of the Greek Language. By Dr. Raphael

Klihner. Translated by S. H. Taylor, LL.D. A new edition by
Charles W. Bateman, LL.B., sometime Scholar of Trinity College,
Dublin. (London : Simpkin and Marshall.)

6. Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero. By William Forsyth, M.A., Q.C.

2 vols. (London : Murray.)

7. Biblical Essays. By Rev. John Kenrick, M.A., F.S.A. (London;

Longmans.)

8. La Chaldee chretienne: etude sur Vhistoire religieuse et politique des

Chaldeens-unis et des Nestoriens. Par Adolphe d'Avril. (Paris :
Benjamin Duprat, Challamel.)

9. The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema in Egypt, Syria, Arabia De-

serta and Arabia Felix, in Persia, India, and Ethiopia, a.d. 1503
to 1508. Translated from the original Italian edition of 1510,
with a preface, by J. W. Jones, Esq., F.S.A. ; and edited, with
notes and an introduction, by G. P. Badger, late Government
Chaplain in the Presidency of Bombay. (London : printed for the
Hakluyt Society.)

10. ^ Church History of Ireland from its invasion by the English in

1169 to the beginning of the Reformation in 1532. By the Rev.
Sylvester Malone. (Dublin: Kelly.)

11. Corpus Beformatorum, Vol. xxix. Joannis Calvini Opera qum

supersunt omnia. Edid.", G. Baum, E. Cunitz, E. Reuss, theologi
Argentoratenses. Vol. I. (Brunsvigas: Schwetschke.)

12. Etudes sur VHistoire de VHumanite. Par F. Laurent, Professeur

h. rUniversite de Gand. "Les Guerres de Religion." (Bruxelles:
Lacroix, Verboeckhoven et Cie.)

698 Contemporary Literature,

13. Englische Geschichte vomehmlich im sechszehnten und siebzehnten

Jahrhundert. Von Leopold Kanke. Vol, IV. (Berlin : Duncker
und Humblot.)

14. Court and Society from Elizaheth to Anne. Edited from the papers

at Kimbolton by the Duke of Manchester, 2 vols. (London :
Hurst and Blackett.)

15. Swedenhorg; sa Vie, ses Ecrits^ et sa Doctrine. Par M. Matter, con-

seiller honoraire de I'Universite, ancien inspecteur general des
bibliotheques publiques. Deuxieme edition. (i*aris : Didier.)

16. Alexander Hamilton and his Contemporaries; or, tJie Rise of the

American Constitution. By Christopher James Kiethmiiller.
(London : Bell and Daldy.)

17. Die Deutschen Hulfstruppenimnordamerikanischen Befreiungshriege,

1776 iis 1783. Von Max von Eelking. Erster Theil. (Hanover:
Helwing.)

18. Gothe: ses memoireSf sa vie. Par Henri Eichelot. (Paris : Hetzel.)

19. Corneille, Shakespeare j et Goethe. Etude sur V influence anglo-ger-

manique en France au XIX' Steele. Par William Eeymond.
(London : Williams and Norgate.)

20. Kleine historische Schriften von Heinrich von Sylel. (Munchen:

Literarisch-artistische Anstalt.)

21. Histoire politique et litteraire de la Restauration. Par Leon Ver-

dier. (Paris : Hetzel.)

22. Memoir es pour servir ct Vhistoire de mon temps. Par M. Guizot.

Vol. VL (Paris: Michel Levy.)

23. Le Parti liberal, son programme et son avenir. Par Ed. Laboulaye,

de rinstitut. (Paris : Charpentier.)

24. Life of William Hichlin^ Prescott. By George Ticknor. (Boston :

Ticknor and Fields.)

25. The Life and Letters of Washington Irving. By his nephew Pierre

M. Irving. Vol. IV. (London : Bentley.)

26. Mr. Kingsley and Dr. Newman : a Correspondence on the Question

whether Dr. Newmxin teaches tlial Truth is no Virtue? (London:
Longman.)

27. " What, then, does Dr. Newman mean?" A reply to a Pamphlet

lately published by Dr. Newman. By the Rev. Charles I^ingsley.
(London and Cambridge: Macmillan.)

28. A Plea for ilie Abolition of Tests in the University of Oxford. By

Goldwin Smith. (Oxford : Wheeler and Day.)

29. Pensees et Fragments divei's de Charles Neuhaus, ancien Avoyer de la

republique de Berne. Publics d'apres le manuscrit autographe par
les fils de I'auteur. (Bienne : K. F. Steinheil.)

Contemporary Literature, 699

SO. Tales of a Wayside Inn. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (Lon-
don: Routledge.)

31. My Beautiful Lady. By Thomas Woolner. (London: Macmillan.)

32. Die Cnistaceen des siidlichen Europa : Crustacea Podophthalmia, mit

einer Uehersicht iiber die horizontale Verhreitung sdmmtlicher euro-
paischer Arten. Yon Dr. Camil Heller, O. Oe. Professor der Zoo-
logie an der kk. Med.-Chir. Josefs-Akademie in Wien, &c. Mit
10 lithografirten Tafeln. (Wien : BraumUller.)

S3. Die frei lelenden Copepodeny mit besonderer Berilclcsichtigung der
Fauna Deutschlands, der Nordsee und des Mittelmeeres. Yon Dr.
C. Claus, ordentlicliem Professor der Zoologie und Director des
zoologisclien Museums an der Universitiit Marburg. Mit 37 Tafeln.
(Leipzig : Engelmann.)

34. Ergebnisse meiner Reise nach Habesch im Gefolge seiner Holieit des

regierenden Herzogs von Sachsen-Kohurg-Gotha Ernst II. Yon
Dr. A. E. Brehm, Director des zoologisclien Gartens zu Ham-
burg. (Hamburg : 0. Meissner.)

35. Memoir e sur le Terrain de Transition des Vosges. Par tie geologique

par J. Koechlin-Schlumberger ; Partie paleontologique par Wm.
Ph. Schimper. Forming part of Yol. Y. of Memoires de la Sodete
des Sciences Naturelles de Strasbourg. (Paris et Strasbourg :
Yeuve Berger-Levrault et Fils.)

36. Geologic et Paleontologie de la Region sud de la Province de Con-

stantine. Par M. H. Coquand, Professeur de Geologic a la
Faculte des Sciences de Marseille. (Marseille : Arnaud et Cie, ;
Paris : Savy.)

37. Ud)er Synchronismus wid A ntagonismus von vulkanischen Eruptionen

und die Beziehungen derselben zu den Sonnenflechen und erdmag-
netischen Variationen. Yon Dr. Emil Kluge, Lehrer an der k.
hoheren Gewerbschule zu Chemnitz. Mit einer graphischen Dar-
stellung der vulkanischen Eruptionen von 1600-1860. (Leipzig:
Engelmann.)

38. Das Cyan und seine anorganischen Verbindungen nebst dem Mellon^

eine Zusammenstellung alter daruber bekannt gewordenen Erfahr-
ungen. Yon Dr. Otto Bernhard Kiihn, Prof. d. theor. Chemie
a. d. Universitat Leipzig. (Leipzig : A. Abel.)

39. Das MikrosTcop und die mikroskopische Technik : ein Handbuchfiir

Aerzte und Studirende. Yon Dr. Heinrich Frey, Prof, der
Medizin in Zurich. Mit 228 Figuren in Holzschnitt, und Preis-
verzeichnissen mikroskopischer Firmen. (Leipzig : Engelmann.)

40. Physiologische TJntersuchungen im Gebiete der OptiL Yon Dr. Al-

fred Wilhelm Yolkmann, Professor in Halle. Erstes Heft, mit
21 in den Text eingedruckten Holzschnitten. (Leipzig : Breit-
kopf und Hartel.)

700 Contemporary Literature,

1. The life of Confucius has never been written, either by his learned
countrymen or by Europeans, -with that regard to critical accuracy
which is now considered indispensable even in biographies of much less
remarkable personages. Dr. Plath of Munich has carefully examined
the original authorities in chronological order; and his investigations
reduce the amount of reliable information on the life of the great Chi-
nese sage to a very small quantity. The genuine writings of Confucius
himself contain hardly any thing which throws light upon his biography.
Of information derived from his disciples and followers, the book called
Lun-iii is the most important soiu^ce. It is a collection of four hun-
dred and ninety-seven sayings of Confucius and his disciples. The tenth
chapter of this book describes how Confucius lived, how he ate and
drank, how he was clothed, &c. And here Dr. Plath says, " man sieht
da ganz den chin. Pedanten." Next to the Liin-ili come the memorabiUa
of Meng-tseu, who was, however, no immediate disciple of Confucius, but
of Tseu-sse, the grandson of Confucius. Far less confidence is due to
the information derived from the so-called philosophers (Tseu), which
stands apparently on the * same level with the grossly improbable dia-
logues handed down on the same authority as having taken place be-
tween Yao and Shiin, who lived more than two thousand years before
Christ. The dialogues between Confucius and his disciples which are
given in the Li-ki are certainly spurious. There was an ancient book
called Li-ki which was recommended by Confucius to his son ; but the book
which now bears that name is much more recent. The Kia-iu, or House-
dialogues of Confucius, are equally apocryphal. They belong, according
to Father Gaubil, to the time of the Han dynasty, and represent Chinese
ideas ciu-rent after the persecution of letters, not anterior to it. Several
learned Jesuits besides Father Gaubil have expressed their disbelief in
the authenticity of these dialogues, of which Dr. Plath gives an accurate
analysis. The earliest historical account of the life of Confucius is that
of Sse-ma-tsien, in his great work the Sse-ki, and the principal authority
here followed is the Lun-iii, which is sometimes quoted verbally. The
last work described by Dr. Plath is the J-sse, a large work on the an-
cient history of China, containing all sorts of information, credible and
incredible, about Confucius. On looking back at the results of his enj
quiry. Dr. Plath concludes that an accurate chronological biography of
Confucius is impossible. Of his youth hardly any thing is known. The
most ancient and trustworthy authorities give but few and scattered
details of his entire life. There are also great difficulties as to the real
nature of his principles. The Chinese of later times have ascribed to
him all sorts of unauthenticated doctrines. Many of the dialogues
ascribed to him are undoubtedly spurious. Yet it would be unsafe to
judge him solely by the contents of his genuine writings and the short
sayings found in the Llin-iu, for even these lend a probability to the
ritual " responsa," for instance, found in less authentic documents like
the Li-ki and the Kia-ili. The best plan, therefore, in writing the bio-
graphy of the Chinese sage, is to give all the principal datOy carefully
indicating the source of each, and the amount of reliance which can be
placed upon it.

Contemporary Literature,

701

2. The Chinese novel Yu Kiao Li was translated into French by-
Abel Remusat in 1826, that is, at a time Avhen the passion for what
the Romantic school called " la couleur locale" was very strong. Its suc-
cess was great, and must be ascribed not only to the peculiarities which
recommended it to the taste of the day, such as the painting of habits
and modes of thought extremely remote from the European, of which
it is full, but to the higher qualities of literary composition which marked
it out for translation, — a simple, well- conceived, and ably -developed plot,
and the variety and truth of the characters. A completely new trans-
lation is now offered to the public by M. Stanislas Julien, who has
constantly kept in view the wants of students of the Chinese language.
The former translation was a great deal too free to admit of its being
used for the explanation of the text. In many places the ideas of the
original had utterly disappeared. It could hardly be imagined that
the two following translations, for instance, had reference to the same
text :

Abel Remusat.

" Croyez en les rapports d'un pere,
le jeune homme ira a tout.

Mais au moindre examen, le vide
de la tete se montrera."

Stanislas Julien.

**P'ing-kiun adressa une commu-
nication secrete a Teng-tou.

Dans le monde, on est oblige de
flatter les autres."

Abel Remusat had also suppressed all the historical allusions, of which
the novel is full ; and he had in fact utterly misunderstood them. The
following is a curious instance. A passage which M. Stanislas Julien
thus translates, " Apres avoir vu Siang-jou, la belle Wen-kiun ne
craignit pas de passer par dessus les rites ; elle avait bien ses raisons,"
was rendered by Abel Remusat, " Le prince des lettres, quand deux per-
sonnes se conviennent ne defend pas de passer par dessus les rites pour
arriver a un heureux resultat." Here the proper names Wen-kiun and
Siang-jou have been misunderstood, and translated according to the
philological elements of which they are composed, the former by
*' prince of letters," and the latter by " quand deux personnes se sont
vues et se conviennent." It is clear that a version in which blunders of
this kind occur at every step must be considered as obsolete in presence
of the requirements of the day. A far more authentic " couleur locale"
than that which was admired by the Parisian critics of 1826 will un-
doubtedly be found in the translation now given by M. Stanislas Julien,
and the learned notes which accompany it. The English reader, if not
deterred by occasionally tedious repetitions, will find the story curious
and interesting both in its plot and its details. The peculiarly Chinese
characteristics (of which the passion of the hero for two young ladies, ter-
minating in his marriage with both of them, and the perfect happiness
of the three parties, is not the least remarkable) are perhaps hardly less
striking than the many details which prove that the Chinese world is
not divided from our own by so profound a psychological difference as
is sometimes asserted. The following passage is taken from the very
first chapter. Three gentlemen are drinking together, and are on the
point of displaying their poetical talents. " Mais au moment oii ils
allaient tous trois manier le pinceau, soudain les domestiques vinrent

702 Contemporary Literature.

leur annoncer la visite du seigneur Yang, le moniteur imperial. Cette
nouvelle fut loin de les charmer; Pe-kongne put s'empecher de gronder
les domestiques. 'Imbeciles !' leur dit-il, 'vous saviez que j'etais a boire
avec messieurs Ou et Sou; il fallait repondre tout de suite que je n'y
etais pas.' * Seigneur,' repondirent-ils, ' nous avons bien dit que vous
etiez sorti pour faire des visites. Mais les gens du seigneur Yang
nous repliquerent que leur maitre etant alle demander le seigneur
Sou dans sa maison, on lui avait appris qu'il etait ici a boire. Voila
pourquoi il est venu le chercher ici. D'ailleurs, comme il avait vu de-
vant votre porte les chaises et les chevaux de ces deux messieurs, il
nous a ete impossible de le renvoyer.' "

3. Two or three years ago the learned editors of the great Sanski'it
Lexicon published at St. Petersburg complained of the difficulty which
they experienced in the prosecution of their task, in consequence of the
fact that some very important texts had not yet been subjected to a
satisfactory amount of criticism. Among these texts they specified the
proverbs of Bhartrihari, and those in the Panchatantra. In spite of
Benfey's labours, the poetical portions of the latter work required a
careful examination. A revision of the text of Bhartrihari by one of
the editors was promised ; and it was hinted that it might be desirable
to publish at the same time a collection of the proverbs of other Indian
poets and thinkers.

The handsome volume now published by Dr. Bcihtlingk is the first
part of such a collection. It contains, in alphabetical order as far as ^,
all the proverbs of Bhartrihari, those in the Panchatantra, Hitopade9a,
Vikramacharitra, and Haberlin's anthology. Besides these the Amaru-
9ataka, and poetical passages of a kindred nature, the law-books of
Manu and Yajnavalkya, the Mahabharata, Ramayaua, and many other
works, have largely contributed to form an anthology of a very remark-
able description. When a proverb is found in several books, it is given,
as far as possible, in the most ancient form in which it has appeared.
In cases where it is not easy to ascertain the original form, two or even
more texts of the same proverb are given. The critical apparatus con-
tains accurate references to the sources of each passage, and all variants,
even of the most trifling kind, are scrupulously registered. A German
(and in some cases, where a more learned language seems to be desir-
able, a Greek) translation accompanies each proverb.

4. The attempts made to explain the ancient languages of Italy,
and particularly the Etruscan, have, it is but too well known, been
crowned with little success. The greater part of these attempts were
so thoroughly unscientific in their method that an accurate account of
them may be considered a waste of labour. Nothing is to be learned
from them. They are of the same character as the interpretations of
Egyptian hieroglyphical inscriptions which were proposed before the
true key to them was discovered. Although little, therefore, can be got
out of the book of Professor Kisi about the diffei'ent systems to which
he gives learned names, instead of simply calling them rubbish, the loss

Cojitemporary Literature* 703

is not great. We agree with him about the untenableness of those
interpretations which he condemns. We differ, however, from him as
to the extent of the condemnation which ought to be pronounced. If
the Semitic method of interpreting Etruscan be wrong at all, it is
wholly and entirely wrong. It cannot be partly true and partly false.
It is a mistaken moderation to say, " Non corriamo agli estremi. NeUa
incertezza in cui versa questo genere di studi, giova tenersi in un pru-
dente riserbo. Nulla 6 piu funesto alia scienza che lo spirito di sistema.
Guardiamoci dal negare troppo leggiermente ogni fede alle ardite indu-
zioni dello Stickel e dal padre Tarquini, dal rigettare indistintamente

ogni lor congettura ; ma quando il dotto Alemanno quando il

Tarquini," &c., " diploriamo altamente 1' esagerazione e gli abusi a cui
sogliono trascorrere anche ingegni elevati, una volta che sieno inca-
pocchiti in un' idea qualunque." This is running off on a false scent
altogether; and we are therefore not at all surprised to find that a writer
who has so little sense of philological science ends his book with a
chapter proposing as the real solution of the difficulty a hypothesis
which, however plausible to reason and supported by analogies in the his-
tory of language, is in the particular case of the Italian language purely
a priori, and not justified by the all-important process of verification.
The scuola prettamente itcdica, which he patronises, seeks the key to the
old Italian languages in the dialects still spoken in the corresponding
parts of contemporary Italy. But our author is afraid of exclusiveness
here also; and he proposes to apply a sort of eclectic system which
should combine the good elements to be found in each of the other
systems. It is hardly necessary to say that we have no very sanguine
expectations as to the light which is likely to be thrown on the ancient
Etruscan or Messapian languages by a comparative dictionary of the
existing patois of Italy. That very numerous and important benefits
may result to philological science from such a dictionary, if compiled
by competent hands, is, however, indisputable.

5. Mr. Bateman's edition of the translation of Dr. Kuhner's Greek
Grammar is a really valuable contribution to school literature, not only
as being very cheap and portable, but as being carefully compiled and
accurately printed. In a duodecimo of 660 pages we have not only all
the principal phenomena of the Greek language explained and illus-
trated, but we have a delectus, in the shape of progressive examples for
translation from and into Greek, a copious series of examination ques-
tions, and a Greek-English and English-Greek lexicon (or vocabulary)
at the end. And this is an excellent method of teaching Greek from the
very first, and one that may save schoolboys years of often unprofitable
and always distasteful labour. " The present work," says the editor,
" is so arranged that the pupil may at once proceed to translate from
Greek into English, and vice versa, after becoming familiar with the con-
tents of the introductory sections. With this view, sentences of the
most elementary nature are first proposed, including only the simplest
forms of the verb, some parts of the verb ei/xi, and a few indeclinable
words,— adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions, — ^to diversify them;

704 Contemporary Literature,

the iiiller consideration of the verb being reserved till afterwards. Thus
it will be seen that the present work combines grammar, delectus, and
lexicon ; consequently the boy, when he has mastered it, has acquired
insensibly a stock of words, while he is, at the same time, enabled to
commence the translation of a prose writer (such as Xenophon) with
ease to himself, and with much greater accuracy than he would other-
■vvise be capable of."

There is, however, one weak point in this work, though it is com-
mon to every Greek grammar that we know of. The inflexions of
verbs are complicated by the addition of a considerable number of
purely imaginary forms, — that is to say, forms which might have ex-
isted, by analogy, but which, as a matter of fact, do not exist, and the
use of which, in writing Greek, would wholly alter the character
of the ancient language. A great many of these spurious forms are
given, and that without the slightest intimation that they are really
barbarisms. In fact, there is probably not one verb in the Greek
language that has all its forms (in tenses, moods, and persons) in actual
use. In page 217 we are indeed told in a note, that " In these tables
forms of rare occurrence are put in brackets." And yet on the very
same page we have such very questionable words as ccr</>aA.K€tv and
e7rc<5f)7yvetv given as genuine; in page 218, 7ri<f)av$ov, TrecfxivOoxrav, i^pav-
6(ov] in page 219, LfxcpKa, Ifxepfx-qvy IjxepovfxaL', in page 220, rertA-Ka, aia-vpKaj
(Tvpovpudi. We could put our pen through hundreds of such barbarisms,
and we can only hope that they will be eliminated in a future edition.
Only those, indeed, who are familiar with the really ancient forms will
be particularly struck by their novelty ; but we must say, it is not only
giving infinite labour, but doing positive harm, to students to imbue
their minds with such erroneous notions of Greek verbs. A few of
these we will here add, but only as specimens : ij^XaKevKa, c^AaKcv/cctv,
ey\v(f}a, eyXvxjieLv, l/crtKa, IktCk^lv, hrrv)(a., kirrv^uv., w/crtKa, wktlkuv, hpevKaf
eij^euKctv, aprjpoKa, ap-qpoKCiv^ r]V(i>pOoov, TreirapwxrqKa, ^ehva(i)7rr)Ka, c^cSixrw-
Tn/JKCLv. Can it be shown that any classical writer, or even any of the
most debased period, has used these words ? If not, they are pure
creations of the fancy ; they are words that " might have existed, — only
they don't." That some of these occur in the Septuagint is possible :
but if so, they should be marked as peculiar, and indeed, in our opi-
nion, omitted from manuals which are designed to teach classical
Greek.

We believe, however, on the whole, this Grammar is characterised
by correctness and sound views. We might perhaps object to making
the two constructions ei tovto eXcyes, rj/xdpTaves av, and ci tovto lAc^as,
^fxapT€<s av, absolutely identical (p. 476). The exact difference it is
not easy to give in English; but the former means, " had you been dis-
posed to say this, you would have been on the verge of error ;" the
other, " had you said this, you would have been in error."

We much doubt — though we believe the distinction is Buttmann's —
the propriety of making two separate verbs (p. 163), XP*^> " I prick,"
and xptw, " I anoint." These meanings seem different, but are probably
identical; for the notions oi puncturing and rubbing oil into and through

I

Contemporary Literature. 705

the pores of the skin are correlative. Perhaps the idea of a light quick
touch is the primary one, as in xpaiVco and ^^LfxTTTOi.

The full and accurate exposition of the cases and the constructions
of the prepositions (p. 357 to 417) deserves all praise. It is quite suf-
ficient even for students of a more advanced order, and is strictly
philosophical, yet simple in its arrangement.

6. Drumann's shapeless and unreadable book has made it a com-
paratively easy task to write the history of the generation that saw the
ruin of Roman liberty. Since his work was completed, a powerful and
brilliant writer, the only German rival of Macaulay, has gone over the
same ground in the spirit of a scholar and an artist. The judgments
of both Drumann and Mommsen have been severe on Cicero ; and while
the first has drawn up a formidable indictment against his character,
the other has depreciated in an almost equal degree his intellectual
powers. According to INIommsen, he was not only vain and weak, but
insincere, shallow, wanting in energy both of thought and purpose, a
journalist, a mere reviewer — " ein Feuilletonist — eine achte journahsten
Natur." His eloquence, however, his respectability, his love of civilisa-
tion and of freedom, have won the sympathy of many who knew, as
well as Mommsen or Drumann, the scientific worthlessness of his phi-
losophy, his inability to understand the great writers whom he copied,
his inefliciency as a statesman, and the eager selfishness of his private
character. His reputation, which must wane in a scientific age, naturally
flourished in uncritical and moralising times ; and there have been men
who compared him as a philosopher Avith Plato, and as a political
thinker with Burke.

Mr. Forsyth's Life of Cicero belongs to the old school ; and he has
managed to stand by its opinions without glaring inconsistencies, by
avoiding all minute enquiry, and sticking to generalities. He gives no
account of Cicero's writings, but passes many judgments which, without
it, are irrelevant. The I)e Officiis is " the best manual of ethics be-
queathed to us by heathen antiquity." " His standard of morality was
as high as it was perhaps possible to elevate it by the mere light of
nature." Without some description of his doctrines, there is no test
given by which his actions can be fairly judged ; and such sentences
as these are as vain as the slashing insults of Mommsen. It would have
been a fitting work for a -svriter of Mr. Forsyth's industry and literary
abiUty to compare the ethics of Cicero with those of the Socratic Dia-
logues, of Aristotle, and of the later Stoics, and to ascertain how far the
morality of Christianity was anticipated, and what were definitely the
deficiencies of the best practical philosophy of paganism.

7. Mr. Kenrick, the author of Ancient Egypt under the Pliaraohs
and Phoenicia, has reprinted three essays, which originally appeared in
periodical publications. The first and most elaborate of them is on the
much-disputed question as to the relation in which St. Mark's gospel
stands to those of St. Matthew and St. Luke. St. Augustine first sug-
gested the notion that St. Mark had the appearance of being " ISIatthaei

706 Contemporary Literature,

pedissequus et breviator." Griesbach, in a remarkable dissertation, un-
dertook to show that the entire gospel of St. Mark, with the exception
of one or two sections, is made up out of passages from the first and
third gospels. This view has been maintained by very able writers ; but
it has been as strongly opposed by others of equal ability. Mr. Ken-
rick's essay originated in the endeavour to form a clear idea of the events
of our Lord's crucifixion. He found in the gospel of St. Mark the clue
to the perplexing variety in the accounts of the evangelists ; and further
enquiry convinced him that this gospel " bears internal evidence of be-
ing the oldest of the three which it is now customary to distinguish as
the synoptics, and that when they differ, it deserves to be considered as
the most authentic record of our Lord's life and teaching.'* The com-
parison between the gospels, as conducted by Mr. Kenrick, will, we be-
lieve, convince most readers that he is right in vindicating the origin-
ality of St. Mark ; and the current of opinion among biblical critics is
setting strongly in that direction. But when he goes so far as to call
this gospel the " Protevangelium," and to argue that it was so, it is dif-
ficult to follow him without getting entangled in questions which it is
impossible to decide with certainty one way or the other.

His essay on the gift of tongues is intended to show that the sacred
text does not countenance the opinion that those who received the gift
were endowed with the power of speaking languages which they had not
learned. " The evidence that foreign languages were really spoken" on
the day of Pentecost " is contained," he observes, " wholly in the paren-
thetical part (vv. 6-11) which relates the conflux of the foreigners, and
their remarks on what they heard." And he doubts whether the speech
which is attributed to these foreigners can literally have been spoken by
those into whose mouths it is put. With reference to the Church of
Corinth, he argues that a power so irrationally and capriciously exercised
as to call for expostulation on the part of St. Paul could not be really
bestowed by special inspiration. He explains the phenomenon by the
fact that the Church of Corinth contained, among its members, several
who spoke a foreign language, and that, the religious impulse some-
times coming upon them so powerfully as to overbear considerations of
propriety and sound judgment, they broke forth in prayers or ejacula-
tions to which the hearers could not respond, not understanding the lan-
guage which was spoken.

The third and last essay, on the question whether St. Paul designated
the Athenians as religious or superstitious, is a successful vindication of
the Vulgate and Authorised English version of Acts xvii. 22. We should
have thought the eflibrt quite superfluous, if the opposite opinions were
not still gravely defended in Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.

8. The author of La Chalde'e cliretienne is not particularly distin-
guished by original learning or deep thought ; and he is decidedly defi-
cient in humour. The writer of Eastern Churches, in contrasting the
habits of Anglican bishops with the austere lives of Nestorian prelates,
ironically laments the inhuman regulations which deprive the latter
of the enjoyments of beef, mutton, and Lord Mayor's festivities. This

Contemporary Literature, 707

delicate satire is entirely misunderstood by M. d'Avril, who believes
that the author he quotes merely speaks " en vrai Anglais ;" and he
solemnly remarks : " certainement il est triste que les Anglais ont si peu
le sentiment de ce qu'il y a de grand et d'utile dans les austerites reli-
gieuses ; mais cette inintelligence a un bon cote, c'est une garantie que
les Anglais ne feront jamais de nos Orientaux des protestants." But,
though neither witty nor learned, the book contains a good deal of
useful information, taken at secondhand, and put together in a very
readable shape.

9. Of the private history of Ludovico di Varthema little is known
except what may be gathered from his travels. The Biographie Uni-
verseUe speaks of him as a gentleman of Bologna and Roman patrician,
and adds that " son voyage est un des plus importants pour I'histoire de
la geographic^ et pour I'histoire en general." It has nevertheless had
its phases of neglect as well as popularity. Within a hundred years
after its publication, it passed through ten Italian, three Latin, seven
German, and four Spanish editions, besides retranslations or abridgments
in French, Dutch, and English. Subsequently it fell into the shade,
from which the Hakluyt Society, with laudable zeal, have now rescued
it. They have bestowed on the present edition the greatest care, yet
not more than the book deserves. It is enriched with copious and
valuable notes, in which the statements of Yarthema are confirmed or
corrected by the accounts of the most celebrated Oriental travellers down
to the present day. Of the truthfulness of his details in general there
cannot be a doubt ; and when we consider how many falsehoods and
fables he must have heard, and how completely he was dependent on
oral testimony, we cannot but wonder at the judgment with which he
winnows chaiFfrom grain, and false from true. In passing from one
country to another, he steadily pursues his system of observation, with-
out many reflections or preconceived theories ; and his style is marked
by a delightful simplicity and freshness. It is evident from the dedi-
cation of his work to the Duchess of Tagliacosso, that he could have in-
dulged with effect in more ornate composition ; but the privations of a
long and perilous journey, together with the multitude of things to be
narrated, rendered brevity both a necessity and a merit. So far from
practising intentionally on the credulity of his readers, he is careful to
explode accredited fictions whenever the opportunity occurs. He refutes,
for instance, the story, so long current in Christendom, of Mahomet's
body being suspended in the air at Medinah. " You must know," he
says, " there is no cofTm of iron or steel, nor loadstone, nor any moun-
tain within four miles of the city." His adventures are numberless, and
he appears never to have been at a loss for an expedient. At Da-
mascus he bribed a renegade captain of Mamelukes to admit him into
the escort of the pilgrim caravan bound for Mecca; and thus, under the
guise of Islamism, he was enabled to see and learn much from which,
as a Christian, he would have been shut out. ■ At Mecca a Moorish
merchant recognised him ; but Varthema, compelled to admit that he
was an Italian, stoutly professed his zeal for the Prophet, and prevailed

VOL. IV S a

708 Contemporary Literature.

on the Moor to hide him in his house till the !Mameluke escort had
passed on. At Zida, or, as it is now called, Juddah, the port of Mecca,
where none but Mahometans were allowed to live, he lay fourteen days
in a corner of the mosque, covered up with his garments and groaning
piteously. At Ehada, in Arabia Felix, being imprisoned more than
two months with eighteen pounds weight of iron on his feet, he feigned
madness to attract the attention of the queen ; and subsequently, at
Calicut, he turned physician, and set up for a Mussulman saint with
signal success. In the midst of all his craft and violence he used to
commend himself to the keeping of God, and ascribe all deliverances to
a merciful providence ; while underneath his slip-shod morality he pre-
served, no doubt, a certain substratiuu of Christian principle. His
Itinerario is one of the most entertaining and eventful that a traveller
ever wrote. By the graphic descriptions it gives of the religion and
habits of the several peoples of the East three centuries and a half ago,
it proves that civilisation has, in proportion, made as much progress in
that quarter of the globe as in the West. It is evident, moreover, that
in losing somewhat of the barbarous element, Arabia, Persia, India, and
Ethiopia have lost much of the romantic also.

10. We lately pointed out some of the blunders from which all the
resources of Trinity College library and a life devoted to study failed to
preserve Dr. Todd in his book on St, Patrick. It cannot be matter of
surprise if a country curate, leading a life of ministerial activity amidst
a scattered population of several thousand persons, should not find leisure
to write a perfectly faultless work on the ecclesiastical history of Ireland
from the twelfth to the sixteenth century ; and it is not without unfeigned
admiration for the intellectual elasticity and vigour which such an
undertaking displays, that we nevertheless recognise in Mr. Malone's
volume on that subject another proof of the vitality of ancient errors,
which a little care would at any time have been enough to rectify.
Mr. Malone, indeed, is not a very exact writer. He tells us that the
Donation of Constantine was proved to be spurious by Baronius in the
Critica of Pagi; and he quotes, as " contemporaneous writers," for an
event of the year 1156, three historians who died respectively in 1237,
in 1259, and in 1328. But his account of the gift of Ireland to Henry
II. is full of mistakes, for which the whole responsibility does not fall
on him, as they are traditional among writers on that subject. Thus
he tells us that the Bull of Adrian IV. was given in the year 1155; that
Alexander III. expressly appeals to it in the similar document which he
afterwards issued ; and that John of Salisbury cannot have been exces-
sively anxious to prop up the claim of Henry, at one period of his life,
because, at a very much later period, he recommended that the spiritual
sword should be drawn against him for his conduct towards Archbishop
Becket. Instead of insisting on these blemishes, it may be worth while
to consider more minutely an event over which modern writers have
thrown a great obscurity.

The Bull of Adrian must have been issued in the spring of 1156.
The Pope came to Benevento in December of the previous year, and

Contemporary Literature, 709

remained there during the whole winter. Here he was visited by
John of Salisbury, the secretary of the Primate Theobald, who had been
sent on ecclesiastical business to the former Popes, — Eugene and Anas-
tasius, — and who now came on a more important mission. John ac-
quired an extraordinary influence over the mind of the new Pontiff,
who loved to open his conscience to his Saxon countryman, and declared
that he preferred him even to his own relations. During the three
months they spent together, the affair of Ireland was arranged; and when
John of Salisbury started for England he carried with him the famous
deed, and the symbol of investiture, for which, with a strange felicity,
Adrian had chosen an emerald ring. The document would be drawn
up and dated only when the messenger who was to take it was ready to
depart ; and as the three months which John of Salisbury relates that
he spent at Benevento began only after the Pope's arrival at the end of
December, this brings us to Maixh 1156.

Irish patriotism has generally been reluctant to admit that the
condition of the Church of Ireland was really known at Eome, or
in any degree justified so grave an act; and the accusation made by
the Irish princes in the fourteenth century, that Adrian had acted
wiglicana affectione, has been admitted even by such writers as Car-
dinal Pole and Dollinger. In both respects, however, a careful exami-
nation of the facts will vindicate the English Pope. It is not true,
as Mr. Malone states, that there was " comparatively little to be
corrected" at the Council of Kells in 1152. There was the Gregorian
discipline to establish, for which the Holy See had incessantly struggled
since the days of Hildebrand, and which St. Malachi first tried to intro-
duce after his journey to Rome in 1139. Even when the legate Paparo
came to Kells, thirteen years later, the thing remained to be done ; for
the decrees regard the abolition of simony, the celibacy of the clergy,
and the institution of tithes. We need not cite the annals of the Four
Masters to show that constant wars and civil disorders at that time made
the introduction of any ecclesiastical reform very difficult. We know that
the Irish prelates themselves despaired of it, and represented to the Pope
that it could not be accomplished without the intervention of England.
Kot once, but repeatedly, they sent warning exhortations to Eome.

" Quantis vitiorum enormitatibus gens Hybernica sit infecta

ex vestrarum serie litterarum nobis innotuit," says Alexander HI. to
the archbishops of Ireland.

Long before the days of Adrian it had been customary with the
Popes to commit to the successors of Charlemagne the care of religion
and the defence of the faith in countries to which the imperial influence
extended. But for nearly a century the emperors had been the most
dreaded enemies of the Holy See ; and during this long conflict the Nor-
mans were the protectors on whom it relied, and to them had passed the
most honourable prerogative of the imperial crown. Hildebrand had
prepared for the great struggle for the emancipation of the Church by
erecting two Norman kingdoms. During his administration of the
affairs of the Church Nicholas II. had invested Robert Guiscard with
•Calabria and Apulia, and Alexander H. had sent to William of Nor-

710 Contemporary Literature,

mandy a sacred banner for the conquest of England. William continued
to be his favourite among the European princes ; and the Normans of
Southern Italy gave him a refuge at the hour of his death. Since that
time they had founded states in Syria and Armenia, in Sicily and Greece ;
and a monk of Monte Cassino, writing in those days, was astounded at the
rapid progress of their power, and believed that it was destined to over-
shadow the whole earth. Within three years before the election of
Adrian IV. the power of the race had received a vast increase, for the
marriage of Henry Plantagenet with Elinor of Aquitaine united the
western half of France to the crown of England.

The accession of Henry II. delivered England from the tjrranny
and misery of an unhappy period ; and the strong hand with which he
grasped the reins of government excited great hopes for the future
among the clergy. For he was of a generous nature, and fond of the
society of educated ecclesiastics. No shadow fell on the commencement
of his reign from the vices which darkened its close; and zealous, able
churchmen loved him for his virtues to the end. This is the language
of William of Newburghj and Peter of Blois, who knew king Henry
only in his later years, was persuaded that so good or so great a monarch
had not appeared in Christendom since the time of Charlemagne : '' Dili-
gebam ipsum, et diligo, et semper diligam ex aiFectu . . . confiden-
tissime dico, majoremque partem mundi testem habeo, in hac parte a
tempore Caroli, nullum fuisse principem, adeo benignum, prudentem,
largum et strenuum" (Epist. 14). There was much to impel Adrian to
contribute to exalt an influence so puissant for the good of the Church,
when Henry came before him as a suppliant, with all the prestige of
youtli, of power not yet abused, of the pacification of England, and of
his warm devotion to the Holy See.

The principles of Gregory VII., which hitherto had governed the
political action of the Popes, afforded no claim to dispose of Ireland ;
and there was no example, even in their dealings with the Normans,
which could supply a precedent. The Sicilian monarchy was an ordi-
nary feudal dependency of the Church of Rome ; the Norman vassals of
the Pope swore to defend his spiritual and his temporal authority when-
ever they where summoned, and acknowledged him as their suzerain.
The conquest of England, justified by no such claim, led to no similar
agreement. Alexander II. ardently desired the success of the expe-
dition, and sent a blessing, which materially contributed to it. But he
professed to enjoy no political jurisdiction over the Anglo-Saxon realm ;
and afterwards, when his successor demanded homage of the Conqueror,
it was refused: " Fidelitatem facere," said WiUiam, " nolui nee volo, quia
nee ego promisi, nee antecessores meos antecessoribus tuis id fecisse
comperio."

In the case of Ireland there was more than in that of England, and
less than in that of Apulia. The Pope claimed a positive right to dis-
pose of the country ; but he exacted no feudal service or homage in
return for it. Gregory VII. was accustomed to support his demands
by some documentary evidence of their justice. Where he claimed
homage he undertook to prove that it had been done of old ; but where

Contemporary Literature, 711

he had nothing to appeal to he pretended to no sovereignty. He
claimed none, for instance, in France ; yet the king of France was, of
all princes living in his time, the one who made the worst use of his
power. In those cases where his great knowledge of the Papal archives
provided him with no positive claims, he never made up for the
deficiency by asserting a superior abstract right, independent of those
which belonged to him under the feudal system : he never mentioned the
Donation of Constantine. Now in Ireland there was less ground than
any where for such a dominion. Not only was it beyond the limits of
the empire, whose Roman or German sovereigns had conferred so many
privileges on the Popes, but it had not even paid such tribute as came
from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, and as had been claimed of France.
The right to dispose of the sovereignty of the island could only be sup-
ported by stretching the theory of the power of the keys far be-
yond the limits which Gregory VII. had obsei'ved. John of Salisbury
loosely defends it, on the ground that the Donation of Constantine
included dominion over all the islands : " Nam omnes insula, de jure
antiquo, ex Donatione Constantini, qui eam fundavit et dotavit, dicuntur
ad Eomanam Ecclesiam pertinere." There is no such passage in any
kno\vn text of the document ; and the Donation is never referred to
by the Popes in the Bulls by which they conferred on Henry the
dominion over Ireland.*. Adrian defines his right. in terms which are
inconsistent with the language of John of Salisbury, for he simply claims
all Christian islands : " Omnes insulas," he writes to the king, " quibus
sol justitiae Christus illuxit, et quaj documenta fidei christianaj ceperunt,
ad jus B. Petri, et sacrosanctae Romanse Ecclesise (quod tua et nobilitas
recognoscit) non est dubium pertinere." This parenthesis may be
explained by those words of Henry, in the 136th letter of Peter of Blois,
which Lingard has understood in another connection: "Vestrse juris-
dictionis est regnum Angliae, et quantum ad feudatorii juris obliga-
tionem vobis duntaxat obnoxius teneor et astringor." Alexander IH. yet
more pertinently casts aside the authority of the Donation ; for while
Constantine is very naturally made in that instrument to restrict his
gifts within the boundaries of the empire, — " populum .... im-
perio nostro subjacentem," — Alexander distinctly admits that Ireland
did not belong to the empire, but aflarms that the Church possesses
peculiar rights over islands which she has not in Continental states :
*' De regno illo, quod Romani principes, orbis triumphatores, suis tem-

poribus inaccessum, sicut accepimus reliquerint Romana Ec-

clesia aliud jus habet in insula quam in terra magna et continua."

The meaning of these obscure words appears to be that, whereas the
Holy See had confirmed and recognised the integrity of certain states,
and the rights of certain crowns, in return for services rendered to itself,
— as in the cases of Charlemagne and Robert Guiscard, — and by this
reciprocity and the sanction of her laws had adopted such states and
princes into the commonwealth of Christendom, the islands, like some
of the outlying parts of the Continent, had not been included in these
compacts, and remained beyond the pale of this political system. It
was conceived that fall political rights and independence hardly belonged

712 Contemporary Literature,

to any Christian people, except by virtue of the recognition it obtained
from Kome j and that recognition was scarcely bestowed unless it could
be made to contribute to the general authority of the Church, and to
serve her civilising mission. The Popes desired to establish such an
exchange of services that their political resources should be increased
by every effort which they made for the dissemination of the faith;
and they therefore strove to bring the remoter portions of Christendom
within the orbit of the system which they governed, by attaching them
as satellites to greater powers, or as direct dependents on themselves.
As the area of medieval civilisation spread, assisted by the Empire and
by the Frankish chivalry which was set in motion by the Crusades, the
West Slavonians, Scandinavia, England, Ireland, Portugal, and several
provinces of the Eastern empire, were thus successively brought under
the influence of other races, which already formed part of the respublica
Christiana, in politics as well as religion. There were other cases, such
as Hungary, Poland, and Dalmatia, where the Popes entered, without
any mediator, into direct relations with the kings. Nevertheless, Ireland
remains the one solitary instance in which the Holy See invoked a
right which was purely imaginary, to justify the subjection of an inde-
pendent Christian country to a monarch who had neither rights to
enforce nor wrongs to avenge.

It is moreover tl;e earliest practical application of a theory which
was vaguely foreshadowed in the amplifications of Gregory VIL, and
was destined to undergo an extreme development. Although Gregory
was scrupulously faithful to the letter of the law, and acted only by
means of ideas which all his contemporaries recognised, yet in defend-
ing his policy he sometimes used arguments which contained in the
germ doctrines very different from those to which he appealed, as a
practical statesman, for the groundwork and justification of his policy.
These arguments, as stated in various parts of his Epistles (iv. 2, 24;
vii. 6; viii. 21), are as follows: Civil government is instituted only for
ends which the government of the Church pursues with more ample and
efficient means ; for the State is an invention of sinful humanity, whereas
the Church is founded by God, and the Pope is, by virtue of his office,
infallible in doctrine and saintly in life. Inasmuch as religious men
are subject to the Church in their whole lives, those who live in the
world cannot be exempt from her control precisely in those matters in
which the occasions of sin are most frequent, and its consequences most
injurious. The power over evil spirits which is conferred by holy
orders must include power over those who yield to their suggestions.
If a confessor may judge the conscience of a king, the Pope has a better
right to do so ; and if the Church has power over the soul of a king,
she must have power over his croA\Ti, which is of lower dignity than his
soul. To deny that she can bind and loose in the things of earth as
well as heaven is to deny her sacramental power. The authority of
the Holy See over secular affairs is as much more absolute than over
spiritual as secular affairs are inferior to spiritual; and no arbitrary
laws and institutions of man can set limits to a power which can dis-
pense from the sacred canons, and from every law whose origin is not

Contemporary Literature, 713

directly from God. It is a far higher prerogative to remove and de-
pose patriarclis and bishops than to remove and depose the princes of
the earth ; and the Church of Eome may confiscate and distribute at
will all human authorities and every earthly possession: " Si potestis in
ccelo ligare et solvere, potestis in terra imperia, regna, principatus,
ducatus, marchias, comitatus et omnium hominum possessiones pro
meritis tollere unicuique et concedere." This was a theory which,,
whenever it came to be acted on, would at once supersede all laws,
either positive or natural, and give to the Popes that absolute power
which was afterwards claimed as an actual right by Pontiffs less cautious
than Gregory VIL It was revived in the twelfth century by Hugh of
St. Victor, whose words were afterwards used by Boniface VIII., and
was countenanced by some expressions of St. Bernard, whose real
matured opinion was strongly opposed to it.

The man who made these ideas prevail in the policy of the Church
was Adrian's chancellor, Cardinal Roland, an old professor of law, who
preferred the absolute doctrines of the schools of Bologna to the feudal
ideas of the preceding period. He was the chief of those who relied on
the Normans for security, and regarded the imperial claims as a system
of usurpations ; — " ex parte illius Kolandi quondam cancellarii per con-
spirationem et conjurationem contra ecclesiam Dei et imperium Wil-
helmo Siculo astricti," says his rival, Victor IV. Adrian's first impulse
on all occasions was to follow the advice of this consummate statesman ;
and the two events which cast an appearance of irresolution and incon-
stancy on his policy were those on which the resistance of the other
Cardinals obliged him to disown the acts of his chancellor, in the peace
■with Naples and the famous scene at Besan9on. Roland was with
Adrian at Benevento when John of Salisbury obtained the Bull j and it
was doubtless his work. It was dictated by the policy which he was
the first to carry into practice, and which was more fully acted upon
when, as Alexander lU., he succeeded Adrian on the Papal throne. The
Bull of Adrian was inoperative ; and Adrian himself showed no interest
in the execution of the enterprise it encouraged. But Alexander had
evidently taken pains to master the question fully ; his later Bull is full
of the grounds and considerations which induce him to grant it; he
recites the information he has obtained ; he quotes his authorities; he
writes to the Irish princes requiring them to submit, and to the Irish
prelates praising their submission. He does not cite the Bull of his
predecessor to support and justify his own ; for he was now more amply
informed, and he was conscious that he himself was mainly responsible
for Adrian's act. That act holds indeed a high place in history as a
sign of the changing times ; for it is founded on principles not before
recognised in the Church ; but it had little practical significance, John
of Salisbury claims to have obtained it ; but when he fell shortly after
into disgrace, in all his letters defending himself against the displeasure
of the king, he never thought of pleading the service he had performed
in obtaining the gift of Ireland.

Of the three persons concerned, Adrian himself is the least respon-
sible. Neither the initiative nor the burden of the decision was his.

714 Contemporary Literature,

From the course of his early life, it is scarcely possible that he can
have had the feelings of a fellow-countryman for those in whose behalf
he performed the one act from which has sprung all the obloquy that
has rested on his name. The time and circumstances of his birth made
him an outcast in his native land. His father was a poor ecclesiastic of
St. Albans ; and he was born in the pontificate of a Pope who said that
the best of the English priesthood were the sons of the clergy. But the
time was approaching when the custom that they shoidd follow their
fathers' calling, and succeed to their benefices, was broken down by
Anselm. The first serious attempt to enforce the Roman discipline
touching the celibacy of the clergy in the Anglo-Norman Church was
made at. the synod of London in 1102; and from that time it is probable
that no one could be ordained sub-deacon who did not live in continence.
These statutes, however, hardly did more than regulate the conditions of
ordination, without constraining the priests to dismiss their wives. When
that step was taken, some resigned their preferment rather than comply;
others persisted in defiance of the law until, in 1108, excommunication
was made the penalty of disobedience. The birth of Adrian probably
preceded the latter of these dates, but not by many years ; for his mother,
who afterwards bore a son who was his half-brother, was living when
he became Pope. The father retired to the monastery of St. Albans,
and left his son in utter destitution. He lived on the alms which he
received from the monks, until his father turned him away, bidding
him angrily go and work for his livelihood. The youth was resolved
that he would not fall beneath the rank of life in which he was bom,
and was ashamed, as the son of a clerk, either to work or beg in his
own country. He had a sort of hereditary claim to the learning he
was too poor to pay for. He therefore went to France, and after much
suffering obtained his education in that monastery of Provence of which
he became the abbot. He grew unpopular with the monks ; and his
countrymen afterwards believed that it was because he was a foreigner:
" indignati quod hominem peregrinum levassent super capita sua," says
William of Newburgh. This report, the only confirmation of that
anglicana affectio he was afterwards accused of, is extremely improbable.
The objection might have weighed at the time of his promotion, but
otherwise would scarcely arise later on ; and his biographer, his friend
and countryman, who could have no motive for suppressing so simple
an explanation of the dissensions which opened a career to him in
Rome, is silent about it. There is good reason to believe that he had
early divested himself of the sympathies of an Englishman, and that he
had no national partiality for the Normans. He had received all his
education, from the very elements, in foreign schools ; and all his experi-
ence of life had been gained in France. That long and early training
in the monastery by the Rhone, and the revelation of the new world of
knowledge he had received there, must have soon swept away the asso-
ciations and ideas of a country in which he had been an outcast, which
only survived in the memories of his homeless childhood, the hungry
watching by the abbey-gate, and the harsh reproaches of his father.
Probably he had never seen a Norman in his youth without a kind of

Cordemporary Literature. 715

awe, as a being of another order and another race, and he never learned
to speak their language — " Erat enim vir valde benignus et patiens,"
says the same biographer, " in Anglica et Latina lingua peritus."

11. Many years ago a collection was commenced imder the title
Coi-pus Reformatoi-um, which was to include all the writings of the
principal reformers. The editor began with Melanchthon ; but it re-
quired eight-and-twenty quarto volumes in double columns to include
ail his works. Calvin is to be the next, and one volume has been pub-
lished of what promises to be a most valuable edition of his voluminous
writings. It is conducted by three professors of Strasburg, one of
whom is the learned commentator Eeuss, whilst another, Baum, is a
great authority on the history of the Swiss Keformation, and has pub-
lished an important work on Beza. They announce that they will give
a great number of unpublished letters of Calvin and his correspondents,
together with notes, literary introductions, and very ample indexes.
The first volume is a good specimen of the care with which this under-
taking is commenced, for it contains three editions of Calvin's Institutes,
thus enabling us to trace accurately the successive alterations which he
made in the original text. The fearless fidelity of the learned editors
may be relied on for the more delicate work of editing the private cor-
respondence.

12. The ninth volume of the general history of M. Laurent, the
notorious Belgian infidel, embraces the epoch of the religious wars in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The period is very attractive to
an enemy of all Christian dogma, because it supplies him with two
objects of contempt instead of one, and he can distribute pretty impar-
tial reproaches on Catholics and Protestants alike. M. Laurent follows
the progress of humanity and enlightenment, in other words, the pro-
cess by which men divested themselves of religious belief in the mas-
sacres, revolts, and persecutions of those days, where it first appears in
the feeble rise of tolerant ideas. Intolerance, according to him, is es-
sential to Christianity, as it was formed by the Council of Nicea and
by St. Augustine, from whom Protestantism inherited it. But, in spite
of the conservative and retrogressive purpose of the reformers. Protes-
tantism transformed itself into the religion of progress by giving birth
to rationalism; and in the Catholic Church an attempt was made by
the Jesuits to adapt their faith to the necessities of a sceptical age.
This thesis is developed with all the author's extensive reading and his
usual knowledge of the best works in modern literature. Sometimes it
even happens that his information is not secondhand; and there are
some original authorities with which he is evidently familiar. The
ardour of his opinions, so different from those which have usually dis-
torted history, gives an interest even to his grossest errors. Mr. Buckle,
if he had been able to distinguish a good book from a bad one, would
have been a tolerable imitation of M. Laurent.

13. Rankehas never shown his talent for extracting new and minute

716 Contem'porary Literature,

information on a familiar subject more remarkably than in the fourth
volume of his English History^ which extends from the death of Crom-
well to the year 1G74. It is a model of the art of using authorities ;
and the author has obtained so much new matter at Paris and Oxford,
in the British Museum and the Record Office, that he is entirely free
from conventional influences, and presents many new points of view.
There could not be a more instructive lesson in historical investigation
than carefully to compare the methods used in this volume with those
of Macaulay in the following reign. And yet the work has been coldly
received among the writer's countrymen, and has not sustained his
reputation. His strength does not lie in the history of free communi-
ties. He is the historian of courts and statesmen, incomparable at im-
ravelling the web of an intrigue, and divining the hidden, changing
schemes of the most expert politician ; and he understands the force of
convictions, the influence of literature, and the progress of theories ;
but he is happier when he has to deal with personal than with pubUc
opinions, with individuals than with masses. His miniature-painting
preserves with a fidelity amounting to genius the features of royal and
illustrious persons ; but he has not the breadth of touch requisite to do
justice to great popular and national movements, and to dramas in.
wdiich the actors are whole classes and provinces of men. Therefore
we feel thatthere is something inadequate, narrow, and unsympathising,
in his treatment of the constitutional struggles and of the great political
and religious parties, while his intimate knowledge of all the contem-
porary history of Europe is a merit not suited to his insular readers.
But in all that relates to general politics, as in the Triple Alliance and
the character of Clai'endon, the hand of a real master is not to be
mistaken.

14. The Duke of Manchester possesses real historical treasures in
the archives of Kimbolton ; but it would have been easier to estimate
their precise value if he had allowed us to have them without the buck-
ram and motley which accompanies them in his Court and Society from
ElizaJbeth to Anne. The contents of the volumes are twofold. First
there is a history of Queen Catherine of Arragon, founded chiefly on
the documents brought to light by Herr Bergenroth from the archives
of Simancas, but burdened with the whims of Mr. Hepworth Dixon and
the pleasantries of Dr. Doran. Queen Catherine died at Kimbolton ;
and the o>vner of the house naturally takes interest in her history.
But why he should have made it into the first part of sketches of Court
life " from Elizabeth to Anne" is not very intelligible. Why did he
not call his volume Court and Society from Henry VIII. to Anne ? In
the second part are the Kimbolton papers containing the correspondence
of the Montagu family with statesmen and courtiers, beginning with Sir
Francis Walsingham and ending with the Duke of Marlborough. Of
course they only tell a very small part of the story of each person con-
cerned. Mr. Dixon and Dr. Doran have been employed to fill in the
outlines, to paint flaming pictures into which these old i'aded relics could
be inlayed, to weave new garments on purpose to be patched with these

Contemporary Literature, 717

decaying remnants. I\Iany of the letters are without political interest ;
some are important as enabling us to add a few touches to the moral
portraits of great actors in our history. There are two from Robert
Devereux, the great Earl of Essex, which both enable the duke to
institute a curiously exact parallel between his fortunes and those of
Shakespeare's Hamlet, and give Mr. Dixon an opportunity to repeat
some of those calumnies against Essex which his perverse admiration
for Bacon's moral character has obliged him to adopt. It is strange
that in this age of monographs and rehabilitations no one has ever
patronised Essex and the group that sui'rounded him, who represented
all tlie elements of the opposition, — the men of letters in Southampton
and Shakespeare, the Catholics in the destined Gunpowder conspira-
tors, and the Puritans. Let us only hope that no devil will tempt
either Mr. Dixon or Dr. Doran to fill up this void in our literature.

15. M. Matter, in his seventy-third year, has added another to the
long list of books which, during nearly half a century, he has been
writing on the philosophy or history of religion. Though Protestant,
he is not Swedenborgian ; and he comes to the discussion of Sweden-
borg's life, writings, and doctrine, unfettered by the prejudices of a
partisan. The character of the great Swedish theosophist has, he be-
lieves, been sadly misconstrued; and his object is to place the history of
that remarkable man — hitherto a conventional fable — in its true light.
He conceives that in Swedenborg the supernatural finds its fullest ex-
pression ; that he is, in short, the supernatural in presence of the scep-
tical criticism of the last century, and also the greatest reconciliation
ever effected between the natural and supernatural, the rational and the
marvellous.

The title of the work suggests three subjects for consideration. The
book carefully traces every stage of Swedenborg's long career ; but it es-
tablishes very little that differs from the judgment society has long ago
pronounced on the founder of the "New Jerusalem" and the revealer of the
" celestial'"' sense of Scripture to men. It labours to exonerate his writ-
ings from the charge of mysticism, and maintains that, on the contrary,
they are rationalistic. They are really both • the two qualities go hand
in hand in easy brotherhood. That Swedenborg's reasoning faculties
were always on the alert, is beyond doubt ; but the same may be said
of many a spirit-rapper. He argues cleverly ; but his data and postu-
lates are often the creatures of his imagination. Before he entered on
the career which has made him famous, he wrote many books on natural
science ; and the physical knowledge he had acquired during so many
years abundantly led his fancy when this world grew too small for him,
and he traversed other regions in the solar system. One looks in vain
in LI. Matter's entertaining volume for a luminous statement and dis-
tinct repudiation of the Swedenborgian doctrines, such as may be found
m JNIohler's Symbolism. He is indulgent to vague dogma ; and it pleases
him more to enlarge on the moral beauty of Swedenborg's character
than to analyse his system or point out his errors.

718 Contemporary Liter ature*

16. Mr. Riethmliller's sensible and interesting volume on Alexander
Hamilton, the foremost of American statesmen, will bear to be compared
with De Witt's excellent biography of Jefferson, his successful rival.
No foreign writer on political affairs is more worthy of the study of
Englishmen, for none sustained the principles of our government in
circumstances of greater difficulty, or applied them to a condition of
society more remote from our own. European writers such as Mon-
tesquieu and Burke have been more deeply versed in history, and have
enjoyed the resources of a wider induction ; but no philosopher of equal
genius ever presided over the formation of a great political society, or
watched with equal sagacity the phenomena of its early growth. The
wisdom of other men is derived from the long experience of communi-
ties developed to their maturity, or already inclining to their decay. No
great philosopher held a mirror to the age of Solon, or the Decemvirs, or
Charlemagne or Alfred. The Avise and observant Achaian who judged
so keenly the character of Rome in its transition from an Italian to a
universal dominion, and men like Portalis and Fievee, who saw the re-
construction of the French State after the Revolution, are almost the
only instances similar to that of Hamilton watching by the cradle of the
American polity. All the knowledge of those who, coming in the height
of civilisation, taught the diagnosis of disease, has not the peculiar value
of that teaching which other men have learned from the conditions under
which states have been established.

Scarcely older than Pitt, and dying before him, Hamilton occupies
in history a place not less exalted. He distinguished himself as a soldier
in the War of Independence, and afterwards practised as a la^vyer at New
York. He represented that state in the Convention Avhich formed the
American Constitution. Mr. Riethmiiller has not ventured to follow
Mr. Curtis into the detailed history of that great Assembly. In this,
as in other places, he appears to have made little research beyond
the common books which are familiar to Americans. But he errs in
representing Hamilton's influence as predominant on this occasion.
Hamilton was absent during great part of the deliberations ; his scheme
was rejected, as it appears, not unreasonably; and, although no man
present equalled him in talent, there were some who exercised a greater
power. Nor was he so persuaded as his biographer says that a Re-
publican government could alone subsist in America. In all things
except the inheritance of political privileges he sought to introduce the
forms of the English Constitution ; and his political system, although
deficient for a time in the aristocratic element, would have possessed
the essentials of monarchy. His advocacy caused the adoption of the
compromise of 1789 ; but, though he defended it in immortal writings,
he never felt confident of its vitality, and was as conscious of its defects
as those who, like Luther Martin, desired its rejection. Time has shoAvn
that there was no security against the arbitrary force of the people's
will ; and the regulation of the central and the local jurisdiction, the
delicate problem of federal government, ultimately failed.

Speculating as to the probable conduct of Hamilton in the present
controversy, Mr. Riethmiiller concludes that he would have admitted

I

Contemporary Literature, 719

the right of secession, and would have considered that " a republic
maintained by force was no republic at all" (p. 440). A man who
can write thus has not understood the political philosophy of the great
American. No man rejected more decidedly than Hamilton that theory
that the union is a union between separate states, and not a form of
national unity, which is always urged by the defenders of the Southern
cause. The act of the Southern States would have appeared to him, not
a constitutional measure, but a legitimate revolution, crowning that great
enterprise in which he bore a part. It would be congenial to his spirit
to approve the form of government which the Southern Congress insti-
tuted, and to reject, as the very essence of arbitrary revolutionism, the
use of questions of social morality to decide problems of political right.
But he had too much reverence for law, too great a horror of the mo-
mentary action of popular will, to deny that the constitution of a Eepublic
is as sacred and as worthy of armed defence as the crown of any king.

17. Several works have lately been published on the lives of Ger-
mans who served on the American side in the War of Independence,
such as Steuben and Kalb. A volume has now appeared on the Ger-
man auxiliaries of England, remembered by the generic name of
Hessians, describing the war from a point of view which all parties
have neglected, and giving, besides many new details, an original and
interesting view of the war itself. The author has used materials of the
highest value — the archives of the petty German states, and the journals
of many of the officers. There are to be two volumes. The first con-
tains a curious account of the origin and character of those treaties by
which German princes sold their subjects as soldiers to greater states.

During the wars with Lewis XIY., the Emperor often took into his
service the troops of some of the lesser states, and paid their rulers for
them. By this arrangement the princes of such states contributed their
share to the defence of the Empire, without laying heavy burdens on
the country, still suffering from the Thirty Years' War ; and at the
same time they made themselves independent of the Estates, by means
of the subsidies they received. The practice enriched the sovereign,
and relieved the finances of the State. It was natural to argue that
what was done for the Emperor might be done for his allies, or for
any body who was at war with the national enemy. In 1687 Hessians
were sent to serve the Venetians against the Turks, and in the following
year they served the States-General against the French. The War of
Succession might be considered a national war ; and the same Landgrave
gave 20,000 soldiers to England and Holland, while the troops of Gotha
were serving the Emperor in the same cause. The military constitution
of the Empire was such that for more than a century the standing
armies of the lesser States owed nearly all their warlike experience and
repute to services performed under a foreign government. In general
there was no conscription, and ail the men who went into foreign ser-
vice were voluntary recruits ; but for which they could never have been
kept to their standard. Wherever it was possilDle to raise the promised
contingent from the population of a neighbouring territory, this was

720 Contemporary Literature,

done by the governments, in order to spare their own. The practice
"was not unpopular ; nobody thought it immoral or degrading ; officers
of high rank and of reputation from former wars were always ready
to be sent into foreign service ; and in the great French war it was found
that the best soldiers were the Hessians and Brunswickers who had
fought in America. The Landgrave of Hesse and the heir to the Duke
of Brunswick had married English princesses; and in sending troops
against the revolted Americans they deemed that they were acting
legitimately in defence of what might belong to the inheritance of their
children. The treaty of 1775 with George HI. was the tenth of the kind
which had been made by Hesse since the seventeenth century. It is
reckoned that the Landgrave received near three millions sterling from
England in the course of eight years.

18. M. Richelot's memoirs ofGothe are an illustration of the lasting
influence of a man of genius, who seems to seize men's minds here and
there, and force them to make themselves apostles of his doctrines and
propagandists of his renown. M. Eichelot has been haunted by the great
German poet for a quarter of a century. About twenty-five years ago
he published his first book about Gothe ; since then he has written a
history of the Commercial Reformation in England, a treatise on the
German Zollverein, and other works which have given him a high rank
among the economists ; but he has never lost sight of his beloved poet,
on whom he has been brooding through all his economical studies. The
present work is in four volumes, though Gothe's life was not what the
French call accentuated. His journeys were all pleasure-trips. His
social position was fixed early. He was no actor in, but only a some-
what indifferent spectator of, the great drama of the Revolutionary wars.
But his interior life makes up for the monotony of his external career.
Under the sldlful analysis of M. Richelot his biography reads Hke one
of our novels of character where the plot is completely subservient to
the development of the man. Gothe's internal developments were so
romantic, that when he wrote his memoirs, his memory could give him
no test to distinguish the Wahrheit und Diclitung aus meinen Leben — the
truth from the poetical fiction which made up his autobiographical re-
miniscences.

The first volume comprises the hero's youth up to the publication
of Werther. The correspondence of Kestner, published in 1855, enables
the writer to rectify many false ideas about that romance. Gothe told
Eckermann that it still produced among youths of the proper age as
much effect as ever. This does not seem to be the case. The epoch
of its appearance was one of sentimentality, and it is only in such
periods that it could prove itself so inflammatory a squib as it was. One
of its peculiarities is that, whereas romances generally embellish and
idealise ordinary life, this one depresses its characters below the ordi-
nary level. This extreme realism was one of the causes of its success.
The idealised autobiography of the Wahi^heit und Dichtung is tlie chief
authority followed in the end of the first and the whole of the second
volume, which embraces the period from 1775-1789, comprising the

Contemporary Literature, 721

residence at Weimar and the Italian journey. The third vokime is the
one which presents Gothe in the most advantageous light ; it embraces
the epoch of the French Revolution and his relations with Schiller.
The friendship of the two men was a rare spectacle among persons of their
calling. They both had weaknesses enough ; but neither of them was
jealous of rivals; and German literature has reaped the double benefit of
their emulation and collaboration. The fourth volume perhaps exhibits
M. Richelot's talents to the best advantage, though the reader is always
so much under the influence of the poet that the merits of the biogra-
pher are in danger of being overlooked. Yet the humble labour of
clearing dithculties, and putting together detached notices, is one worthy
of the more gratitude from its very want of brilliancy. It is just this
conscientious work, so rare in a Frenchman, that makes M. Richelot's
careful and yet brilUant volumes especially valuable.

19. A Swiss Rationalist, M. Reymond, has disguised imder the
names of Gorneille, Shakespeare, and Goethe an agreeable but superficial
essay on the action of German literature on France in the nineteenth
century. A careful analysis, tracing ideas through several intermediate
stages, would show that there is nothing in recent French literature ori-
ginal or of native gro^vth except Socialism, which belongs to the social
rather than the literary history of France. And the greatest philo-
sopher of the Socialists, Pierre Leroux, drew his method from the Ger-
mans. But in M. Reymond's volume there is no minute research and
no historical method. He has an eye for imitations, but none for intel-
lectual influences. M. Cousin, of all French writers the one who owes
the greatest literary reputation to the skilful adaptation of German ideas
to the forms of French thought, occupies a prominent place in the
volume ; but this is due to no critical judgment, but simply to the cir-
cumstance that he met the author in the street during a shower of rain,
and conversed with him under the same umbrella. It was during the
summer of 1860, when Lamoriciere commanded the army of the Pope ;
and M. Cousin astonished his companion by pronouncing opinions on
the temporal power similar to those of M, Guizot's pamphlet, and of M.
Thiers's speech in the Legislative Assembly. " I have renounced ab-
stractions, ideas, and principles, especially now that men attack with a
poor remnant of the philosophy of the eighteenth century the temporal
power of the Pope, that is to say, the independence of the Church, the
only ark of salvation of spiritualism, the only barrier that we can
oppose at the present day to the invasion of materialism" (p. 72). M.
Reymond's idea of religion is that it is a system of moveable dogmas
governed by the progress of science and the social requirements of each
successive age, whose ethics have always been held by the conscience
of men in opposition to all positive religions. MM. Michelet, Yacherot,
and Renan are at present the fathers of this accommodating church, the
revelation of which consists of nothing but the discoveries of science.
Our author, however, seems to be no better endowed with science than
with faith.

722 Contem'porary Literature.

20. Professor Heinrich von Sybel is a disciple of Ranke, who has
learned the art of critical investigation in the dry accurate school of
medieval history, without losing the power of grouping facts according
to ideas, or being absorbed in the prosaic minuteness which is some-
times a consequence of those antiquarian studies. Like his more
famous but scarcely more able master, he is strongest in dealing with
the modern world, and with an advanced civilisation; and his aversion
for religious controversy draws him to that period which was entirely
occupied with political problems — the period of the Revolution. The
tone of his mind is essentially modern ; it has little warmth or depth,
and little power of sympathy. But in his own chosen sphere, among
men like the heroes of Thucydides, and questions such as delighted
Tocqueville, as a mere political historian, we know of none we could
prefer to him. He has lately collected in a volume a variety of his-
torical dissertations, which are apparently chosen with some reference to
his position as a leader of the Prussian opposition, since they illustrate
most of his political and national opinions. Those on Eugene of Savoy
and the rising of Europe against Napoleon are splendid sketches, full of
political design, and without any show of research. That on Catherine II.
is vitiated by the hasty presumption that there is no ground to doubt the
authenticity of her memoirs ; whilst the view of the Second Crusade
gives the brief result of very profound studies, which have been partly
published in another form. There is an attack on the medieval theory
of the state, which was originally published above twelve years ago,
and contains in germ those views on the injurious influence of the
revival of the empire in Germany by which the author more recently
occasioned a very active literary and political controversy, and gained
the palm in dexterity and popularity, if not in other respects. Two of
the most interesting essays are devoted to De Maistre and Burke, and
of these the latter is less tainted with prejudice and in general more
satisfactory. It embraces, however, only Burke's policy towards Ire-
land, Avith a remarkable account of events subsequent to his death,
down to the union. Nothing that Herr von Sybel ever wrote is moroj|
fitted to give a high notion of his moral and intellectual qualificationjj
for Avriting history ; and nothing more worthy of Burke has yet been
written. The essay originally appeared in connection with another,
equally good, on Burke's position towards the French Kevolution ; and it
is to be regretted that they have not been united in this volume. Pro-
bably the author was unwilling to republish matter which has served
as the scaffolding to his great work on the revolutionary epoch. But
if these two essays on Burke and that on the War of 1813 stood alone,
there would be little to qualify our admiration for the noble powers of
the author, and we should be tempted to exalt him to a level which the
remainder of the volume does not justify us in assigning to him.

21. M. Verdier, the latest of the many recent writers on the Re-
storation in France, begins his book with the remark that the period
of which he treats has the rare merit of having discussed almost all the
elementary questions of public law and the conditions of a free govera-

Coutetuporanj Literature. 72S

mont. The endeavour to reconstruct a monarchical society and a con-
stitutional polity after the Kevolution and the Empire was as vast, and
tlie problems involved in it as difficult as those of 1789; and a book
equal to such a subject would be as full of interest as that of Tocque-
ville. So much has been lately written on the period by some of the
best historians and most thoughtful politicians of the country, that the
labour of drawing up a compendious narrative of the efforts and failures
of those fifteen years is less than subjects so attractive generally demand.
31. Verdier's volume is a useful compendium, chiefly based on the radi-
cal Vaulabelle. The author is what is called in France a child of '89.
For the history of the year 1815 he discards that remarkable book
which, under the name of Colonel Charras, is said to contain the views
of the illustrious Changarnier on the campaign of Waterloo, and sticks
to M. Thiers. He even affirms that Wellington insisted on the prompt
execution of Ney. But he i& not a partisan blinded by irritation. He
admits that the fall of Napoleon was precipitated by the servile spirit
he had maintained in the Senate, and that his credit never stood as
high as that of the first royahst ministry, when the finances were ad-
ministered by Baron Louis. Later on he does hearty justice to that great
liberal statesman De Serre. When he says that Lewis XVIII. took no
jiains with the Charte, because he did not know the value of words in a
state which is governed by eloquence, he gives, somewhat indistinctly, a
real argument for written constitutions. The leading idea of the book
is that the heritage of liberal principles left by the Revolution gradually
delivered France from the degradation and oppression of 1815, aided
by the brilliant literary movement of the time ; and he traces with
much truth the steps by which they came to triumph over the royalist
reaction.

22, The sixth volume of M. Guizot's Memoirs is dedicated to the
early years of his memorable administration. There is the same ela-
borate simplicity that betrays art as in the earlier volumes, and the
same stern gravity that regards his own career and sentiments as things
too solemn for familiar language. The satisfaction he feels at his own
character betrays him into what the world would generally consider a
piece of false psychology. " I have always carried into public life an
optimist disposition, ever ready or resolved to hope for success, which
veils over obstacles at the beginning, and afterwards renders disappoint-
ment more easy to bear" (p. 7). There is an excellent passage on the
moral nature and purpose of the state, against those who treat it as a
police organisation for the protection of property. " That would be a
very unintelligent and very frivolous power which should content itself
with the material and actual order, and should not aspire also to possess
the minds and the future. ... It is the dignity, it is the honour of men
to become attached to their government only when their ideas are satis-
fied at the same time that their interests are assured, and to require to
believe that it will last when they shall be no more" (p. 345). It may
be partly this disposition to think more of moral than material interests
which makes M. Guizot unwilling fairly to consider the great econo-

voL. IV. 3 6

724 Contemporary Literature.

mical motives of the schism between the people and the middle class on
which despotism is founded in France. But he understands better than
many of his countrymen the perishable nature of every triumphant de-
mocracy. It is a volatile essence that can be fixed only in composition.
If left to itself, it either dies a violent death at the hands of monarchy,
or slides, by the normal process of nature, into aristocracy. M. Guizot
nowhere repeats, in this volume, the exposition of his own views which
is virtually contained in this Three Generations ; but he describes as
follows the theories which it was his business to combat in the years
1840-1848: "The universal right of men to political power; — the
universal right of men to social comfort ; — democratic unity and sove-
reignty substituted for monarchical unity and sovereignty ; — the rivalry
of the people against the middle class succeeding the rivalry between
the middle class and the nobility ; — the science of nature and the wor-
ship of humanity raised up in the place of religious faith and of the
worship of God."

23. M. Laboulaye's book on the liberal party, its programme, and
its future, is of solid, dui-able quality, though it was written for an
occasional purpose. Its exciting cause was the revival of the liberal
spirit in France, as shown by the elections of 1863 ; and it is dis-
tinguished by a deep knowledge of national character. The cause of
the perpetual alternations of despotism and liberty in France M. La-
boulaye finds in the fact that the French in general do not know what
real liberty is ; not the individual liberty which each man requires for
himself, but that general political medium in which each man lives and
moves, as he breathes in the atmosphere. From this idea he proceeds
to draw the principles of the liberal party, or that party which " desires
neither universal war, nor government by police, nor the repression of
opinion, nor the Continental system," but which aims at obtaining from
the new empire " what it promised at Bordeaux and other places
when it proclaimed itself to be synonymous with peace, the reign of a
laborious and peaceful democracy, the coronation of the edifice, the
advent of a complete and productive freedom."

The whole work consists in the development of this programme.
But the author displays a certain hesitation in the process. He does
not seem precisely to fear the government ; nor was he thinking of the
authorities when he wrote, " A man is not seditious because he wishes
that France should not be inferior, I do not say to England or the
United States, but to Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland." He tells us
of whom he was thinking when he advises those people whose taste
leads them to be liberal, but whose timidity makes them think his pro-
gramme too large and too bold, to consider that in matters of liberty, as
in matters of religion, it is a first principle to think of others more than
of oneself. " We cannot," he says, " make our desires or convictions the
measure of all wants and of all beliefs ; our rights only deserve respect
when we respect the rights of others. The reforms which I demand
have not all the same importance in the eyes of any one reader, but
each has its ardent and conscientious advocates ; all depend on the same

Contemporary Literature, 725

principle ; every one is founded on justice, and has a right to be found
in a liberal programme. Liberty has this great advantage, that it
enables every legitimate ambition to satisfy itself, and thus unites all
noble souls. It is a feast, where each guest may find what he likes
best." M. Laboulaye has thought it his first duty to reassure these
timid people, and to prove to them that he is no radical, and had no
wish to destroy any thing. He thinks with Daunon that " the best
constitution is that which happens to exist," and that the way to deal
with it is to squeeze out of it all it will yield, even though with hard
squeezing it does not promise to yield much. There are two kinds of
democracy, he sajfs. The first is that *' which obeys and flatters a master,
and the next day knocks him down and insults him ; such is the demo-
cracy of the Cajsars, the ignorant and revolutionary democracy, the
mob-rule of appetites and passions. The other is the Christian demo-
cracy, enhghtened and industrious, wherein every individual is taught
from his infancy to govern himself, and to respect the rights of others,
the law which protects individual rights, and the authority which
guards the law. This is the democracy which the liberal party loves ;
this it is which it desires to set up."

Such are the principles of the book. For the argument, the writer
distinguishes between liberties which exist for themselves, and liberties
■ which are the guarantees of the former class — individual and social
liberties and political liberties. He shows how the French system
interferes at every turn with individual liberties ; how it often entirely
exterminates every vestige of the social liberties — liberty of worship, of
instruction, of charity, of association ; how it extinguishes municipal
liberties. " To regulate the individual, the family, the association,
the municipality, the department, the province, — such is the object of
the modern legislator. He knows that the state is a living organism,
and that the strength of the body is the sum of the strength of its
members. What folly, then, is it to quench the force of a society !
Does the administration inherit any thing from that which it kills ?
* With centralisation,' said Lammenais, ' you have apoplexy at the
centre and paralysis at the extremities.' No word can be more true.
Every statesm.an should have it ever in mind, and never forgot that in
politics apoplexy is called revolution."

In the second part the author treats of political liberty, its gua-
rantees, the true nature of its constituent elements, of universal suf-
frage, popular education, national representation, ministerial respon-
sibility, the senate, the right of initiation, justice, equality before the
law, the press, and the future of the liberal party. His opinions are
those of a group of men who seem destined one day to rule France, if
they are moderate enough to secure to others the liberties they demand
for themselves. Here is the rock on which French politicians gene-
rally make shipwreck. They cannot keep from extremes. They run
from unitarian despotism to radical republicanism. It is only in the
mean that they can verify their motto, t/nion de Vordre avec la liberie.

24. Mr. Prescott's life has been written by his intimate friend, who

T2G Contemporary Literature,

is also the most accomplished scholar of his country, in a volume
which would have been "worthy of a still more illustrious subject. He
was one of the most amiable and beloved of men; but there was neither
depth in his nature, nor earnestness in his intellect, to give to the nar-
rative that sort of interest which belongs to the biographies of his fellow-
townsmen, Parker, or Channing, or "Webster. No philosophy and no
passion, neither discovery nor adventure, raised his life above the
common level. Several times, in his earlier years, the great problem of
religion occupied his mind. Mr. Ticknor, who, like him, is a Unitarian,
though made of sterner stuff, relates that he more than once examined
the ordkiary books on the evidences of Christianity, such as Butler and
Paley, with very great care ; that he accepted the historical narrative of the
gospels, and acquiesced generally in the moral precepts of Christianity ;
but that he heartily rejected its dogmas, without ever giving offensive
utterance to his views. On this basis was reared that apparent fair-
ness in the treatment of religious questions which is deemed one of
Prescott's merits, and which earned for him the praises of the late Arch-
bishop Hughes, This placid indifference is very unlike the distributive
justice which is demanded of the intelligent historian ; and Prescott's
description of the religion of Mexico is enough to prove his inaptitude
to understand not merely the quality of religious truth, but the nature
and operation of religious ideas.

It follows that his view of history was veiy superficial. His phi-
losophy did not rise above the ordinary moralising about the develop-
ment of human passion and character. The writers who influenced
his method were the French historians of the eighteenth century, and
especially Mably. It was his business to construct elegant narratives
out of good materials, with taste and in a healthy tone, not to solve
difficult problems, enquire deeply into unknown sources, or trace the
action and reaction of ideas and events. His biography contains so
much information about his studies, that we can follow with perfect
ease the formation of his historical ideal and processes. He took no
more than a literary interest in his craft. He republished Robertson's
Charles V. in order to append a better description of the Emperor's
last years ; but the famous Ijitrodicction was, in his judgment, a fair
and sufficient sketch of the Middle Ages. His own general knowledge
was derived from secondary sources ; and he never knew enough Ger-
man to learn from the Germans the principles of critical investigation.

25. There are few men of note who show to greater advantage in
private life than Washington Irving ; and the biography which his
nephew has now brought to a conclusion draws aside the curtain that
hid him from the world, with considerable skill. His playful Immour,
quick imagination, and genuine benevolence, made his fireside talk and
familiar correspondence sparkle with a sunny ripple. The very name
of his residence on the banks of the Hudson was indicative of the man,
for in every circumstance of life his thoughts and movements were
always on the " sunny-side." Here, at the age of sixty-five, we find him
calm and cheerful, with feelings as fresh as in boyhood, and a kind word

Contemporary Literature, 727

for every one he meets. Here, to use Sir Philip Sidney's expression,
" he cometh to you "with a tale (ay, and with many a tale) that holdeth
children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner." To this
favourite retreat he brought one day from New York a picture which
had strongly touched his religious sensibilities. This was Dupont's en-
graving of Ary Scheffer's " Christus Consolator." He had seen it in the
window of a German shop, and gazed at it till the tears gathered in his
eyes. He thought *' there was nothing superior to it in the world of
art." This occun*ed in the autumn of 1848, when he became a member
of the Episcopal Church, and he was no doubt more than usually sus-
ceptible of the emotions such an engraving was calculated to excite.
With anecdotes such as these his Life abounds, and they are all just
what we might expect to read of the biographer of Oliver Goldsmith.
There are many points of resemblance between these two men, and it
would be interesting to compare their respective characters and writings.
Washington Irving's nephew is keenly alive to the piquancy of his
uncle's style, whether in conversation or composition ; and he never fails
to bring it into prominent relief. He introduces us also to a group of
distinguished literary men, who clustered round the historian of Colum-
bus and Washington, or corresponded with him in his honourable
retirement.

26, 27. Though a good cause appeals the more powerfully to our sym-
pathies when it comes to us in the garb of weakness, yet weakness, in
itself, is not a merit, but a defect. It properly excites in us the feeling
of contempt ; and if it claims for itself an immunity from the laws by
which wrong-doing is restrained, we can witness the vindication of justice
at its expense with a satisfaction untempered by pity. When Mr. Kings-
ley, therefore, makes an unprovoked attack on Dr. Newman, and Dr.
Newman raises his finger in self-defence, there is no reason why any
impartial looker-on should deprecate the necessary result of the con-
flict. Clear perception and exact thought work according to their own
laws, and cannot help the completeness of the discomfiture they inflict
on obtuse and blundering passion. Mr. Kingsley has received no more
than his deserts ; but he has become the object of one of the severest
personal castigations recorded in literary history. Certainly no one
will ever follow in his steps in the hope of " making himself a cheap
reputation by smart hits at safe objects ;" and the Corresponde'nce on
the Question whether Dr. Newman teaches that Truth is no Virtue ? will
preserve a moral portrait of the assailant when men have ceased to be
influenced by his crude opinions, or to admire his unscrupulous rhetoric.

The portrait, though it has been sketched by its original, is not a
noble or attractive one. Filling a place of high responsibility as a
teacher of historical science, Mr. Kingsley, in a popular article in a maga-
zine, brings against the whole Roman clergy, of all times and countries, a
charge of untruthfulness, which in its sweeping universality is mere non-
sense, just as it would be if he brought it against any other considerable
body of Christian men. To clench and point this charge, however, he
singles out a great name, and declares definitely : * Father Ne^wiuan informs

Tj^S Contemporary Literature,

us that truth for its own sake need not, and on the whole ought not to, he a
virtue with the Roman clergy.' Being thereupon challenged to say when
and where the priest he thus accuses has thus accused his brethren, he
shrinks from the proof, referring vaguely to a Protestant sermon of 17
pages preached by the Vicar of St. Mary's, and published in 1844:, and
more vaguely still to " many passages" in works by Dr. Newman which
he abstains altogether from specifying. Having thus shifted the charge
from a priest speaking of priests to an individual Protestant speaking
of himself only, and having thereby swept away the sole pretext which
could be alleged for regarding his mention of Dr. Newman at all as any
thing better than a mere pointless impertinence, he proceeds to offer the
homage of his " gratitude" to the very man on whose head he has just
concentrated this revolting imputation, and to whom he says in the same
breath, "I shall be most happy, on your showing me that I have ivrongcd
you, to retract my accusation as publicly as I have made it." As this
artifice fails, of course, to extricate him from the vice in which Dr. New-
man fixes him down to the alternative of proving or retracting his state-
ment, he next Avrites a paper for publication, in which he declares, not,
what is the fact, that he has made no attempt to prove his statement by
citing any words at all, but, what is not the fact, that Dr. Newman has
denied that certain given words bear a certain alleged meaning — " his
denial of the meaning which I have put upon his words." He surrounds
this declaration with a setting of what he understands to be compliments,
and sends a copy of the paper to Dr. Newman, apparently in the belief
that men value, or at all events accept, expressions of personal esteem
from those who withhold the reparation that is due for grave moral
offences. Undeceived on this point, he takes back the pseudo-courtesies ;
but he still shrinks not only from alleging any definite words as the
groundwork of his charge, but even from confessing that he has shrunk
from it, and persists in a declaration which, though it withdraws the
original charge, founds the withdrawal on a palpable misstatement of
fact. At the same time, as though he were doing something which men
might be expected to regard as a serious act of reparation, he adheres
to the expression of his " hearty regret" at having so far " mistaken"
Dr. Newman as to believe that in a sermon published in 1844 he had
authoritatively ' informed' the congregation of St. Mary's that truth for
its own sake need not, and on the whole ought not to, be a virtue with
the Roman clergy. And then, looking back on the whole of his own
conduct in the affair, and judging it by the standards which his con-
science and his sense of honour supply, he washes his hands before the
" British public" — for he has been told that his letters may be printed
— and complacently exclaims, " I have done as much as one English
gentleman can expect from another."

Perfectly appreciating the demands of the occasion, Dr. Newman
had left the aspersion on the Roman clergy to be refuted by the absurd-
ity involved in its mere statement, and had only taken up directly the
definite charge against himself. In dealing with this, he had scornfully
passed over the author of the article, whose name was then unknown to
him, as well as the editor of the magazine in which it had appeared,

I

Contemporary Literature, 7^

and had simply brought the matter to the notice of the publishers with
whom the magazine was associated. Mr. Kingsley then came forward
on his own account; and when the discussion was over, Dr. Newman,
not concurring in his view of the obligations of an English gentleman,
summed up the results of the controversy, in a second letter to the pub-
lishers, and put it into print, with a few " reflections," chiefly by way
of analysis. This analysis, being a perfectly fair one, added nothing
really to the previous correspondence ; but it pointed the bearings of the
case in a manner better fitted to bring them home to Mr. Kingsley's
mind. He had not perceived the force that was com]3ressed in his
antagonist's letters. " A very moderate answer" is the phrase he uses to
describe the first of them, which, though it certainly was not otherwise
than perfectly moderate, was yet sufiiciently calculated to make the
blood rise to the cheeks of any ordinarily acute and sensitive man to
whom it might happen to be addressed; and he even fancied — so he tells
us — that the most important word in it was " a mere slip of the pen."
But no human skin could be proof against the cuts of the analysis. It
was impossible to ignore the keenness of the blade, or the accuracy of the
aim, or the force of the strokes. Mr. Kingsley naturally writhed under it ;
and, feeling apparently that he could not keep silence without dishonour,
he put aside the question whether a man in that position necessarily
improves it by speaking, and issued a rejoinder, under the title '• What,
then, does Dr. Newman meanf

This pamphlet proceeds on the assumption that, although the author
has retracted his charge against Dr. Newman of teaching lying on
system, and is therefore precluded from any attempt to prove it, yet he
is at liberty to construct and publish exactly the same argument as if
he were engaged in that attempt, provided he asserts that his only
object in doing so is to explain why he originally made the charge.
]\Iuch might be forgiven to a man smarting under the lash which, how-
ever deservedly, has fallen on Mr. Kingsley; but such a theory as this
evinces a perversion of the moral sense, which no mere conjuncture of
external circumstances can account for — much less excuse. It blunts
the astonishment with which we should otherwise follow him through
pages that read like the dull ravings of Exeter Hall, only broken now
and then by touches of a coarser fanaticism. Such a production lies
substantially outside the range of our criticism ; and Mr. Kingsley's
friends — who, unless we misinterpret a passage at page 8, have done what
they could to keep him silent — will not complain of us if, as far as we
are concerned, we leave its main contents to the oblivion which is the
happiest fate they can find. To justify such a forbearance, however, we
must enable our other readers to judge of the character of Mr. Kingsley's
reasoning, by simply putting before them one of his arguments. We
choose the first of them, not because it difiers at all in point of soundness
or honesty from the mass of those which follow it, but merely because
it is the first. The sermon, he says, to which he referred, and which
was preached by Mr. Newman, as Vicar of St. Mary's, and published in
184-i, was not a Protestant but a " Eomish" one. And then he proceeds
to prove it : In another sermon published in the same volume Mr.

730 Contemporary Literature.

Newman asks whether monks and nuns are not '' Christians after the
very pattern given ns in Scripture ;" and in the sermon itself he says,
" What, for instance, though we grant that sacramental confession and
the celibacy of the clergy do tend to consolidate the body politic in the
relation of rulers and subjects, or, in other words, to aggrandise the
priesthood? for how can the Church be one body Avithout such re-
lation ? " Well ? says the reader, impatient for the proof. But there
is no more. That is the proof. So that Mr. Kingsley's final position
on the matter is this, — that any man who asks whether monks and nuns
are not Bible Christians, whether sacramental confession and clerical
celibacy may not be in accordance with the will of God though they
tend to consolidate the ecclesiastical polity, and whether the Church
could be one body without the relation of rulers and subjects, is, eo
nomine^ *•' Eomish" in such a sense that he is in a position to give
authoritative * information' about the ethical system of the Roman
clergy.

No one supposes that Dr. Newman's reputation would be likely to
suffer from any attack Mr. Kingsley might make on it; but the morality
of literature would suffer if popular declaimers were never brought to
book, and taught by experience to fear that critical exactness which
nature and habit have not disposed them to cultivate. There is no
level of nonsense or calumny to which a writer may not descend when
he starts from a merely subjective idea of truth, not labouring to grasp
the object of his apprehension as it exists in itself, and convey it simply
from the world of fact to the consciousness of his readers, unchanged by
its passage through his own mind, but content to view it dimly through
the haze of prejudice and passion, and careful only to impress upon his
canvas the precise distortion that has charmed his fancy. " It is not
more than an hyperbole to say that, in certain cases, a lie is the nearest
approach to truth ;" and it is no hyperbole at all to say that there is a
certain kind of truth which has some of the worst features of a lie.

28. Mr. Goldwin's Smith's Plea for the Abolition of Tests is an elo-
quent appeal, but as an argument implies so many preliminary conces-
sions that it will probably only convince those who are convinced
already. Indeed, it hardly appeals to any one who does not weigh the
comparative value of different principles in the same scales as the
author. To understand what these scales are, we must first remember
that he is a theosophist ; that is, he believes in the sufficiency of the
knowing faculties of man to apprehend and comprehend God, and he
treats as promulgators of universal scepticism and despair of truth those
who, like Mr. Mansel, " prove that men" [of their own reason, researcli,
and sentiment] " cannot know God, and, by necessary implication, that
God cannot make Himself known to man" (p. 94). The meaning of
this is, that he holds the revelation given us to be internal, not exteraal.
Hence, when he admits (p. %S), " not but that there was a faith which
was committed to the Church by its Founder, to be simply held for
ever, and which those who sold the spiritual independence of the Church
for State endowments , . . . most miserably betrayed," lie cannot mean

Contemporary Literature, 'To I

any formulary of faith, — not even the Apostles' Creed, ^vhich, though a
" summary of faith," could not have been a " test" to serve the purposes
of "dogmatism and exclusiveness" (p. 22). He must therefore hold
that all tests of faith conceived in verbal formularies are against faith.
And that this is his fundamental conviction — the point on which he
re;illy though uuconfessedly takes his stand, and argues as if from an
axiom known to all who are worth reasoning with — is clear to any one
who reads his book carefully.

For if he had admitted that the Apostles' Creed had been the primi-
tive test of orthodoxy, then, with his strong assertion of the principle of
development (p. 88), he must also have admitted that this test would
gradually accumulate around it fresh articles of a similar kind, expla-
natory of the original articles in the terminology of a new philosophy,
as in fact it has done. But he utterly rejects these developed tests, on
the ground that they deal with doctrine which no one can understand,
and which, therefore, no controversy can settle (p. 82). This would be
no argument with reasoners who hold that revelation, like an algebraical
formula, contains both known and unknown quantities, and that, though
we may not understand the exact value of x, the process of summing
may lead to some knowledge of its proportion to the known quantities,
and perhaps to an approximate estimate of the unknown. But it is a
valid argument with one who holds the human mind to be of itself suffi-
cient to apprehend and comprehend God. "If there is a God, and if
His voice speaking in our nature does not mock us, we shall be led to

the truth only by free, patient, and careful enquiry, carried on

with the requisite knowledee, and with a single-hearted love of truth"
(1). 90).

In the case of a man thus transparent, one cannot say it would have
been more honest, but it would have shown a truer appreciation of his
situation, if he had confessed at once that all religious tests were in his
opinion essentially irreligious, and had then gone about to prove this
great point. But he prefers to take a wider circuit, and elaborately to
miss the fundamental argument. He talks about the existing tests —
about the immorality of imposing such a mass of controversial decisions
on young minds; of imposing at all articles some of which contain mani-
fest and proved falsehoods, and most of which are doubtful ; and of
giving material rewards to those who accept them, and punishing those
who refuse them. He dwells on the futility of the test for the objects
sought in imposing it, the want of right in the imposing power, the
casuistical expedients for evading the test familiar to the party most
zealous in enforcing and perpetuating it, the penal Avay in which it is
applied, the tyranny and oppression of conscience which it involves, and
Hnally, the entire distinction between abolishing tests and altering terms
of spiritual communion. " This," he says, " is the answer to those who
are disposed to confront the advocates of political or academical eman-
cipation with charges of laxity in doctrine or indifference to religious
truth. It is not proposed to alter the articles, or to relax in any way
the canon of orthodox doctrine required by the Church" (21). On the
contrary, he says, the spiritual strictness of a Church is rather in inverse

732 Contemporary Literature.

than in direct proportion to the stringency of its political tests (24) ; as
if he would permit good Anglicans to increase the number of their
Articles, provided they would only do away with them as political and
academical tests. This is hardly straightforward, if, as we think evi-
dent, his real wish is to do away even with the Athanasian Creed. He
cannot expect his opponents to divide his demands into two parts, and
to let him make the first a stepping-stone to the second, which he pro-
visionally disclaims.

The second part of his pamphlet discusses the propriety of openiug
the universities to the Dissenters. Here he owns that he takes not u
churchman's but a statesman's view of the question. He argues: 1.
That it is within the statesman's province ; that the exclusiveness of the
universities was a consequence of the view that religious unity was
necessary to national unity ; that this view is exploded, and therefore
that there is now the same reason of state for opening the universities
as there was in 1570 for closing them. 2. That the universities are
historically and of right lay, not ecclesiastical, institutions, and that the
present ascendancy of the clerical element is due to mere accident. And
3. That even if they were the property of the national Church, the
property of the national Church is the property of the nation, and the
nation owes it to the Nonconformists to give them the opportunity of
obtaining its highest culture. Then several presumed inconveniences
of the admixture of the orthodox and the heterodox are discussed, and
the excellent eiFects of the association of men of different religions is
shown. So far from promoting religious indifference, the disputes of
earnest men, he thinks, are a proof to all bystanders that both the con-
tending parties hold truth to be a matter of great importance. But the
great benefit he sees is the fact that " Christian morality, the uniting
element, is brought by degrees into the foreground, and dogma, the
dividing element, is by degrees thrown into the background, and may,
in the end, pass practically out of view" (p. 83). He would even open
the faculty of theology to Nonconformists, in order thereby to substitute
the investigating for the dogmatic method of teaching and studying the
science.

The pamphlet ends with a censure on the sceptical liberalism of the
present Government, and a warning to the growing Conservative reac-
tion that its time will be short, that it is merely a back-water — an eddy
in the currents — and that it must soon be overwhelmed when once the
nation is roused from its present apathy to grapple seriously with any
of the great questions Avhich are floating in the social intelligence.

As a violent opponent of dogmatism and sacerdotalism, Mr. Gold win
Smith is of course filled with a great contempt for Papists ; and he con-
ceives (p. 56) that those of us who best understand the interests of our
Church will not desire Oxford to be opened to Catholic students by the
abolition of the present tests. Whatever may be the truth or falsehood
of his conclusion in itself, it is a mistake to suppose that those best
understand Catholic interests who make every Catholic dogma into a
principle applicable to all facts bearing any analogy to that of which the
dogma speaks. Because an infallible authority may institute a test of

ConiempGrary Literature, To3

orthodoxy, it docs not follow that any other authority may do the
same. Because certain truths may be imposed on the conscience, it
does not follow that uncertain opinions may be so imposed. Because
infallible dogmatism is unassailable by right reason, it does not follow
that fallible dogmatism has any reasonable foundation at all. In old
days the doctrine of the sacraments was extended by analogy to all
kinds of natural things. Because words had power in the Eucharist, it
was considered congruous to believe that words and spells had power
also to direct the operations of nature. Because an external application
wrought an inward change in baptism, it was held that all kinds of
charms might produce analogous results. The same fallacy of generalis-
ation which once almost identified sacraments with magical ceremonies,
and which would now lead the orthodox believer to make common cause
with the believer in any dogma whatever, in order to show that belief of
any thing is better than doubt or disbelief, leads to the opinion that
because theological truth is the highest of all truth therefore theology
is the mother and mistress of all sciences ; that because the clergy
have the care of our spiritual life, therefore the direction of our political,
social, domestic, and literary life belongs to them. Rather, he best
understands Catholic interests who would separate both science and
politics from all respect whatever for those interests, would allow
science to seek for truth, and politics to seek for justice, without any
bias Avhatever towards the interests, whether of belief or unbelief, and
then would bring the Catholic faith face to face with this unbiassed
science and these unbiassed politics. So far as this implies a mixed
university, so far is that mixture a benefit for the truth. But certainly
no Catholic will ever be attracted to mixed education on the ground
that it brings its pupils to think slightingly of dogma.

29. The peculiarity of the rensees et Fragments divers of M. Neu-
haus is that they are thoughts upon the thoughts of other writers.
Throughout six or seven hundred pages we have a succession of simple
airs, with variations more or less elaborate. Sometimes the text is
long, and the sermon complete in a line. Sometimes a proposition has
to be combated; as that, ibr example, of Bossuet, that God has no need
of His own great acts, on which M. Neuhaus maintains that He has ;
or of Dupuis, who makes God the motive power of the universe, on
which M. Neuhaus contends that nature is not intelligent, and cannot
commune with or comfort the soul. About two hundred and sixty
authors are cited and commented on in the way of either exegesis or
refutation, and from some of them quotations are made ten or twenty
times. Those whose names recur most frequently are Bossuet, Cha-
teaubriand, Descartes, Rousseau, Kant^ Hegel, Leibniz, Pascal, and
Spinoza ; and the subjects oftenest discussed are metaphysical. The
reflections vary a good deal in merit. At one moment they are tru-
isms, at another senile platitudes, and at another absolutely false; as,
for instance, when we are told in a terse apothegm, that " no man can
be responsible in any degree for the justice of his opinions." The book
contains no little straw-splitting, plenty of playing at metaphysics; and

734 Coutemj^orarf/ Lilcraturc.

much of the unintentional impietj of misbelief ; and it discards the mys-
teries of revealed religion as scarcely worthy the consideration of rational
beings. It is to be regretted that M. Neuhaus, in collecting and enlarg-
ing on such passages as struck him most in the writings of others,
should himself have afforded so little instruction or pleasure. Many,
indeed, of his reflections on matters level with the capacity of all lite-
rary men are just and even beautiful ; but none of them are very
striking. Originality is totally wanting ; the thoughts are seldom pro-
found, though they aim at being so ; and the feeling evinced is by no
means of the deepest kind. The author has no system to work out ; he
is fond of battling with giants, and in contradicting them often contra-
dicts himself. The volume is posthumous. Fourteen years have elapsed
since M. Neuhaus's death ; and posterity would hardly have been a loser
if his manuscript had been allowed to rest quietly beside him in the
tomb.

30. Mr. Longfellow has given us a volume of poetry the plan of
which inevitably reminds us of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Let
all thought of such a comparison be at once dismissed from our minds,
for the modern poem will not bear it. In regard to plot, it is naught ;
but if its separate parts be examined, we shall find real beauties. Mr.
Longfellow judged unwisely when he decided to connect the poems con-
tained in this volume by the awkward and unnatural machinery of the
prelude. A wayside inn in the United States ! what sort of guests or
travellers would one expect to find united in such a place in the year
1863 ? Chaucer brings together at the " Tabard" the very sort of per-
sons whom, granted the common design of a pilgrimage, one would have
been likely to meet there in the fourteenth century. If the same fidelity
to nature and fact had ruled over the composition of the work before us,
the story-tellers at the wayside inn would have been — whom shall Ave
say ? Perhaps a war-divine like Mr. Beecher, a soldier from the army
that took Vicksburg, a Yankee projector, a young English nobleman,
a Confederate spy, a special correspondent, and so on. Instead of these
we are introduced to a student with a passion for medieval literature,
a young Sicilian well acquainted with Boccaccio, a Spanish Jew, a New-
England theologian, a poet, and a Norwegian musician. Why these
various persons all betake themselves to the wayside inn on a given
night we are not told ; nor why they should be successively seized with a
desire of story-telling ; nor why, the stories being told, all should quietly
take their departure, nobody knows whither. No worse-planned poetical
machinery ever disfigured a graceful work by a clumsy scaffolding.

The tales themselves differ much in merit. The first in order,
'* Paul Kevere's Kide," recounting an incident in the War of Independ-
ence, is a slight and poor production. The student's tale, " The Falcon
of Ser Federigo," is a metrical version of one of the tales in the Deca-
meron ; and when we say that the ineffal)le charm of style which belongs
to the original has not evaporated in Mr. Longfellow's version, we give it
no slight praise. The Spanish Jew relates a wild legend, more extrava-
gant than interesting, found in the Tahnud. In the Sicilian's tale, "King

Contemporari) Literature. T35

llobert of Sicily," we come upon a very old friend indeed. Perhaj^s
Ellis's romances are not so popular a work in America as in England.
For ourselves, we confess to a preference for the form which this grand
old legend wears in the book which Ave pored over in boyhood, rather
than the elaborate and paraphrastic rendering of Mr. Longfellow. The
contrasts in Ellis are more effective, the degradation of Robert more
terrible, his wild bursts of wrath more naturally given, even his final
penitence more skilfully evolved out of the antecedent circumstances,
than in the modern version.

The Norwegian minstrel's tale, " The Saga of King Olaf," seems to
be a free rendering of the saga in the Heimskringla relating the career of
that astounding missionary. Olaf was king of Norway in the tenth
century; and, having embraced Christianity, he became exceedingly
earnest in spreading among his half-savage countrymen the light of pure
religion. To this end he adopted the means which seemed to him most
efiicacious. He collected all the pagan "warlocks" or wizards, and
drowned them (canto v.) ; he summoned his people together to a great
Thing at Drontheim, set before them the emptiness of their old religion,
hewed down the images of Odin and Thor, and forced the whole multi-
tude, on pain of being massacred by his Berserks, to submit to imme-
diate baptism (canto vii.). He attempted a similar " conversion" of the
Icelanders through the agency of Thangbrand, a violent and disreputable
priest ;

'' Every where
Would drink and swear
Swaggering Thangbrand, Olaf's priest."

Thangbrand, it may be remarked in passing, is depicted in far lighter
colours in the " Story of Burnt Njal," a contemporary authority. With
all this zeal for the propagation of the faith, Olaf never loses the wild
and fitful temper of the Norse viking : when moved by resentment or
some mad caprice, he is ready at any moment to rush into war with a
neighbour king ; and in a naval expedition of this kind, in which he
visits the southern shores of the Baltic, he is met by a more powerful
fleet, which has on board three hostile kings, and loses his life in the
battle which ensues.

There are many fine things in this version of the old saga. The
conversion of the Berserks, Olaf's bodyguard (canto xii.), is finely and
broadly conceived, and narrated with suitable fire. In the next canto
but one we have a heart-stirring and boisterous picture — words and
rhythm both harmonising with and fitly clothing the thoughts — of the
roaring blades w^ho composed the crew of the Long Serpent, king Olaf's
strongest line- of- battle ship, and rolled in true man-of-war's-man fashion
down Drontheim streets. But the poem draws to a conclusion, and the
reader wonders " Will , the author be so misguided as to draw a set
moral?" Lo! he falls into the snare; he cannot resist the tempta-
tion to improve the occasion. When will poets remember Tennyson's
question :

" And is there any moral shut
Within the bosom of the rose r"

736 Contemporary Literature,

In the last canto " the voice of St. John'' the Evangelist (iiec Dem
intersit, &c.) is heard by Astrid, Olaf's mother, declaring what is the
true spirit of Christianity. Force is the wrong weapon ; patience and
humility effect the only permanent conquests ; " cross against corselet,
love against hatred," and so on. It is a pity that the poet cannot enforce
his moral a little nearer home ; or is " The Saga of King Olaf" really
to be taken as a veiled satire upon the furious paganism of those aspira-
tions which at the present day possess the advanced Christians of Mas-
sachusetts ?

If the first story-teller was something of a bungler, the last, profiting,
we may suppose, by the experience he has gained as a listener, winds up
the evening with a tale which is a complete success. " The Birds of
Killing worth" is really a charming poem. Flashes of a quiet humour
break forth at every turn ; the shafts of a not unkindly satire fly in all
directions. The stupid old farmers, the Calvinistic minister, the deacon
bursting with self-importance, the schoolmaster who unites culture with
common sense, all met in conclave to debate whether the birds shall be
massacred or not for the damage they do in the corn-fields, and deciding
wronghj (as the great vox populi sometimes will, does our author gently
intimate ?), form the most piquant and original picture in the book. The
following stanza is given merely as an illustration of the characteristics
above mentioned, and of the general tone of the poem :

" And a town-meeting was convened straightway

To set a price upon the guilty heads
Of these marauders, who, in lieu of pay,

Levied black-mail upon the garden-beds
And corn-fields, and beheld without dismay

The awful scarecrow, with his fluttering shreds ;
The skeleton that waited at their feast,
Whereby their sinful pleasure was increased" (j). 209).

Of the few detached poems which occupy the last pages of the
volume, two, " The Children's Hour" and " Weariness," have been much
noticed and praised — perhaps as much as they deserve.

31. My Beautiful Lady belongs to the class of subjective poems,
except so far as the minute and accurate presentments of natural
objects in which it abounds may give it an objective character. This
word-painting has, without doubt, the grand merit of truth, and so far
is preferable to the conventional poetic language of the last century,
with its " towering hills" and " purling rills." Yet it is full time that
the approbation given to this style of writing should be reduced Avithin
the limits of reason, and measured by the real requirements of art.
Word-painting may be described as, or rather involves, the intellectual
analysis and interpretation in words of the sensible impressions made
upon us by external objects, such as trees, sunbeams, dress, and the
like. A dreamy, indolent, vaguely-longing temperament denotes the
cast of mind to which such analysis will be most natural and easy ; but
as there is really no great difliculty in it, poets whose genius is of the
secondary order resort to it voluntarily, in order to please their readers.
And thus an unreality arises, which is of a different kind indeed from

Contemporary Literature, 737

the sliallow emptiness of the Georgian poets, as well as less intolerable,
yet which criticism, if faithful to her office, is bound to stigmatise. For
what, after all, is the true end of poetry ? Not, surely, to exhibit ex-
ternal phenomena for their own sake, but, primarily, to paint the pheno-
mena of the mobile complex being of man, and, secondarily, to employ
its power in delineiiting external things as a means for representing
those moral phenomena in fuller relief and with deeper impressiveness.
But this secondary function, with many modern poets, nearly iTsurps
the place of the higher function. There are, no doubt, certain rare and
exceptional states of mind in which, in the intervals of moral agitation,
the intellect employs itself in a morbid and microscopic scrutiny of the
natural objects which surround it. But ordinarily, if there are strong
pent-up feelings in a man's heart, to which he desires to give voice, or if
his mind is full of an agitating and interesting series of events which he
wishes to communicate, the confession or the narrative will be but little
interrupted by imaginative descriptions, which can only be the fruit of
leisurely and curious observation. This is nature; but our poets do
not follow nature. They combine moral truth and analytic truth in
proportions which do not obtain in the actual world. Thus, though
both parts of their work are true, taken separately, to the whole a
dramatic truth is wanting, with which no poet can dispense with im-
punity,— that truth which brings his work into harmony with life and
fact. In the poem before us there is beautiful word-painting in the
canto headed " My Lady in Death ;" and there is also the expression of
genuine desolating grief. But can any one believe that a lover, hanging-
over the death-bed of the fair girl he loves, could let his thoughts
wander to the spear-grass in the meadow, and mentally watch the spots
of rain uniting and dripping in sparkles off the tips of the leaves (p. 86),
or could elaborate in words such an image, even if it flashed moment-
arily before his inward sense ? If not, then this part of the poem is
wanting in dramatic truth.

In My Beautiful Lady the poet relates how, in his opening manhood,
he wooed the beautiful daughter of a brave old country gentleman ; how
his love was accepted and returned ; how, in a few months, consumption
seized on the beloved one, and quickly hurried her to the tomb ; how,
finally, her memory had been to him, in the years that had since passed,
an ever-open fountain of strength and consolation, animating him under
the labours of a profession in which success was hard to win and there
were many competitors, and making his lonely life in the London wil-
derness not unblessed. This is literally the whole substance of the story.
As to the manner of execution, it would be easy to find fault in minor
matters. Exception might justly be taken to the new-fangled, ungraceful
metres which Mr. Woolner has invented (as in cantos i. iv. and vi.),
and to the frequency of awkward or obscure expressions, such as

** I shrunk from, searching the abyss I felt
Yawned by ;"
or

'* The aspirations, darkhng, we
Cherish and resolve to be ;"

73S Contemporary Literature.

or

" herds,
Collecting, lellow pit'ifully bland."

But as we draw towards the conclusion of the poem, while the inten-
sity remains the same, the obscurity and awkwardness of expression
disappear. Parts of the canto headed " Years after" are quite in Words-
worth's best manner. We must find room for an extract :

" Then oft-time through the emptied London streets,
AVTien every house is closed and spectral still,
And, save the sparrow chirping from the tower
Where tolls the passing time, all sounds are hushed ;
Then walk I pondering on the ways of fate,
And file the past before me in review,
Counting my losses and my treasured gains ;
And feel I lost a glory such as man
Can never know but once ; but how there sprung
From out the chastening wear of grief, a scope
Of sobered interest bent on vaster ends
Than hitherto were mine ; and sympathies
Por struggling souls, that each held dear within
A sacred meaning, known or unrevealed : —
And these, in their complexities, and far
Kelations with the sum of general power
Which is the living world, now are my gain ;
And grant my spirit from this widened trutli
A glimpse of that high duty claimed of all."

The canto from which this extract is taken is all a meditation of the
author's at the Lady's tomb. Nearly the whole of it is fine ; strongly J
thought, and simply and purely, not turhidly^ expressed, — praise which ^
could be given to but few of the earlier cantos. This third part, taken
as a whole, is clear and strong, because deeply felt, — because embodying
the spiritual experience sprung out of the very life-struggle and concen- 1
trated endeavour of the writer. But Wordsworth could do all this and*
much more. He had, not so much by natural gift as by continual
labour and meditation, reached to an element of harmony which made
him truly an artist, — enabled him to invest small things as well as
great, and things wholly outside him as well as things touching liis
personality, with forms of beauty. The " Laodamia" and the " High-
land Reaper" are yet more solid evidences of the master's hand, of
the creative art of a great poet, than the noblest passages of the "Ex-
cursion." Of such self-less projection of the poetic spirit upon nature
and human life we cannot believe Mr. Woolner capable ; nor do we
think that, even if circumstances permitted him to labour in his art
like Wordsworth, he could ever attain to the like gift of pure and
simple expression upon subjects not vitally near to him. And there-
fore, in all kindness, and with true respect for the tenacious and loving
nature with which his poem has made us acquainted, — thankful, too,
that he has written his poem, because without it we should not have
known that nature, — we venture to counsel him to write no more poetry,
not to let flattering tongues mislead him into a path which it is not truly
his to walk in, but to concentrate his energy and power upon the crea-
tion of yet unimagined forms of beauty, through the instrumentality of

Contemporary Literature, 739

that art in which he has given convincing proof that he knows how to
•3xceh

32. Since the completion of M. Milne Edwards's Histoire Naturelle des
Crustaccs, in 1840, which is a repertory of all that had been done on the
subject up to that time, and is especially rich in observations on the
Crustacea of the Mediterranean basin, many investigators have laboured
in the latter region. Herr Rathke and Herr Kessler, for instance, have
described some of the forms of the Black Sea; Signor Costa, those of
the Gulf of Tarentum ; Signor Nardo, those of the Venetian Sea ; M.
Lucas, those of the Algerian coast ; M. Verauy, those of the Gulf of
Genoa ; Herr Grube and Herr Lorenz, those of the Gulf of Quarnero.
Dr. Heller of Vienna has now given us a monograph on the forms of
one order of those creatures, namely, the Decapods and Stomatopods,
that have up to this time been found in the Mediterranean basin, which
in addition to many new observations may be considered as a summary
of the present knowledge upon the subject. He describes 89 genera
and 176 species, of which 2 genera and 28 species appear to be new.
The greater part of the descriptions, which are very full, and seem to
indicate the specific characters sharply, are from Dr. Heller's own ob-
servations. This is especially the case Avith the family Pagurina and
the macrurous decapods, to which he has devoted special attention.
The work is illustrated by ten plates containing figures of characteristic
organs, and of some entire forms from different groups, which illustrate
the text sufficiently. From his tabular view of the horizontal distribu-
tion of the order in Europe, we learn that there are now 112 genera
and 287 species; of which 15 occur in the Black Sea, 115 in the Adri-
atic, 153 in the Mediterranean proper, and 41 in the oceanic region of
the Canaries, and in the whole province 185, or nearly two-thirds of the
European species. Of these 174 are marine, 9 are fresh-water, and 2
frequent both ; 83 marine and 3 fresh-water species are peculiar to the
province, 50 are common with the Lusitanian province, 66 with the
Celtic, 30 with the Boreal, none with the Arctic, and 20 are found in
extra-European seas. The Mediterranean province is especially cha-
racterised by the development of Brachyura and Squillina, or grass-
hopper crabs ; and by the total absence of Cumacea. Among the Ca-
rid^B the genera Alpheus and Virbius have a wide distribution, while
the genus Hippolyte is represented by a single species. The Black
Sea has 15 species, of which only one perhaps, Gelasimus coarctatus,
is peculiar to it; for Dr. Heller thinks Crangon maculo8us is probably
a variety of Crangon vulgaris. The Anomobranchiata are wholly
wanting, and out of the sub-order Eubranchiata the families Oxy-
rhyncha Oxystomata, Apterura (a family which includes Dromia and
Homola, or the Dromiacea of De Haan, and the genus Latreillia of
Roux), Loricata, Thalassinidse (corresponding to the genus Thalassina),
and Cumacea.

To the Mediterranean proper, 30 species representing 24 genera are
peculiar, while only 4 species belonging to 4 genera occur exclusively
in the Adriatic. Dr. Heller includes the Canary region in the Medi-

VOL. IV. 3 c

740 Contemporary Literature.

terranean province, in consequence of tlie predominance of forms belong-
ing to the latter; it has, however, no species peculiar to it; for Dr.
Heller considers the Cycloe derdata, which M. Brulle regarded as new,
to be identical with a Japanese form described by De Haan. Of the
44 species found in this region, 35 are common with the Mediterranean.
16 occur in other European provinces, and 16 in extra-European regions,
Of the 20 Mediterranean species which have an extra-European distri-
bution, 4 [Carcifius mcenas, Pacliygrapsus marmoratus, Lysviata seti-
candata, and Fandalus pristis) have their maximum of distribution in the
Mediterranean ; the last De Haan says occurs also in the Japanese seas.
The remaining 16 occur seldom in the Mediterranean, and are therefore
to be looked upon as colonists. The following table will show the pro-
portions of each tribe in the three regions of the province.

Black Sea. ^tf""" Adriatic,
ranean.

r Brachyura .9 74 51

Sub-order Eubranchiata . -j Anomura .2 22 16

V Macrura .4 50 44

Sub-order Anomobranchiata 0 7 4

15 153 115

33. Professor Glaus of Marburg, who is already well known by
several excellent papers on the Crustacea, has published a monograph
upon the free-living Copepods. Eecognising in the divisions of Herr
W. Zenker^ the ' elements of a natural classification, he divides the
Crustacea into: 1. Thoracostraca (Decapoda, Schizopoda, Cumacea, Sto-
inatopoda) ; 2. Arthrostraca (Amphipoda, Ljemodipoda, Isopoda) ; 3.
Trilobites ; 4. Xiphosura ; 5. Branchiopoda (Phyllopoda, Cladocera) ;
6. Ostracoda; 7. Copepoda; 8. Cirripedia. Herr Zenker separated M.
Milne Edwards's Entomostraca into its two more or less distinct com-
ponents, the Copepoda or Cyclopoida of Dana, and the Ostracoda. With
the former he united the neighbouring Siphonostoma and Lerna^odea of
Burmeister, or Lernacopodidas of Milne Edwards, into a single group,
to which he gave the name of Entomostraca. O. E. Miiller, who first
used this term, applied it solely to those forms having tegumentary cover-
ings which remind us of the mollusca (Entomostraca seu insecta testacea
quai in aquis Danise et Norvegia3 reperit, &c.). Dr. Claus thinks that
the word Entomostraca should therefore not be used any longer to ex-
press a systematic conception implying the possession of general proper-
ties and analogies in opposition to Malacostraca ; and he accordingly
uses for Herr Zenker's Entomostraca, that is, for the Cyclopidea, Sipho-
nostima, and LeruEeodea, the term Copepodea. The order so constituted
is a well characterised one. As to the work itself, we believe it to be
one of the best contributions to crustacean zoology which has appeared
for a long time. The sections on morphology and development are very

' The paper containing the views of Herr Zenker was published in Wieg-
mann's Archiv, Bd. xx. p. 108, for ISol, under the title of " Das System der
Crustaceen."

Contemporary Literature, 741

good, and full of new observations correcting previous erroneous views,
or completing the imperfect observations of others, and are well illus-
trated. The section on habits and geographical distribution is not so
full ; a good summary of the distribution of the order in Europe would
be useful, and would have rendered the work more complete.

He divides the order into the following families, to which we have
added the number of genera, indicating at the same time the number of
new ones which he has established in each, and also that of the new
species belonging to those new genera, or to the previously-established
ones : 1. Cyclopida3 (3 genera, one of which is new, and 4 new species);
2. Harpactidie (12 genera, of which 4 are new, and 27 new species);
o. Peltedidje (5 genera, among which 5 new species have been recog-
nised); 4. Corycccidas (8 genera, of which 3 are new, and 12 new spe-
cies); 5. Calanidai (15 genera, ofAvhich G are new, and 26 new spe-
cies); G. Pontellidae (4 genera, of which 2 are new, and 4 new species).
This makes a total of 47 genera, of which 16 are new, and 78 new
species ; in these we do not include the new genera and species pre-
viously established by the author in his various papers on this order.
Among his new genera in the family of the Corycasidae is one called
Lubbockia, having as yet only one species, L. squillomana^ which is an
interesting intermediate form between the Corycaeidte and the Cyclo-
pidse, reminding us most of Dithona in the latter family. This genus
has been so named as a proper recognition of Mr. John Lubbock's
labours in this tield of zoology. Whether further investigations will
justify so large an addition to the Copepoda remains to be seen. The
author cannot, however, be considered a maker of species; he is, on the
contrary, very cautious in including insufficiently studied forms ; he
might, for instance, have added many more in the genus Pontella.

34. Dr. Brehm, who accompanied the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
on a hunting expedition to the Abyssinian coast of the Eed Sea, and
who had already travelled a good deal in Africa, has given us an
account of his observations upon the habits of life of the mammalia and
birds met with during his hunting expedition. The country visited,
although close to the highway of Indian travellers, is very little known.
The Abyssinian coast of the Eed Sea, from the Bay of Tajura beyond
the Strait of Bab-el- Mandeb, and the burning desert forming the re-
markable depression of Bahr Assal, a salt-lake now nearly dried down
to the frontiers of Nubia, appears to consist almost entirely of basalt ;
nor has volcanic activity altogether ceased there yet, as is shown by the
breaking out of the volcano of Ed two or three years ago. As far north
as 18 degrees of latitude, the coast is within the region of tropical rains;
so that the shore is fringed with a dense jungle of Scliora^ a plant about
20 feet high, which only thrives within range of the tides, and which
gradually extends seaward by the accumulation of new soil caught by its
entangled roots. Behind this fringe extends the belt of volcanic land
just spoken of, which, in the latitude of Massaua or Massowah, the port
of debarcation of our hunters, is about thirty miles wide, and is there
called the Samchara. This reorion consists of a succession of irregular

742 Contemporary Literature,

chains of black basaltic hills and valleys. Through the latter runs a fine
network of rivers, along the borders of which vegetation grows with
tropical luxuriance. Here the mimosas, saturated with water, become
large trees; numerous climbing plants, such as the Cissus, an ivy-like
plant, encircles the acacias with its four-sided tendrils, and hangs in
rich leafy draperies. Many Convolvulacse, some with magnificent flowers,
entwine themselves with the cissus, and complete the labyrinthine
arbours which they form, and which often become impenetrable jungles.
To these may be added great numbers of Stapelias, Statices, castor-oil
trees, and species of Capparis. The broad valleys and plains, which are
enclosed by the hills, and the margins of which are fringed with the
rich tropical jungle just described, form a steppe-like land often passing
into true desert, with poor sunburnt plants, which look gray and colour-
less; while the ground itself, heated by the rays of an ever-cloudless sun,
is adorned with the colours of the mirage. Coarse grasses, some her-
baceous plants, tamarisks, Euphorbias, Asclepias, and Salsola, chiefly
form this sunburnt vegetation, while a few stunted mimosas are scattered
over the sides of the black hills in irregular patches of bush. Some of
the valleys are, however, very picturesque, and during the rainy season
are covered with a variety of plants.

Behind the Samchara the highlands rise like walls, and above
these the jagged peaks of the Bogos mountains, 8000 feet high, and
composed of granite, porphyries, and clay-slate. The few rivers that
come down from this high region into the Samchara form deep escarped
ravines. Under the glowing Abyssinian sun there is an everlasting play
of light and shade about the dark mountain masses projected into the
intense blue sky, and thrown into greater relief by the patches of luxuri-
ant green which pools of water call forth upon their steep sides. The high-
lands themselves consist of plains, from which the peaks rise abruptly;
and as there are two rainy seasons, nothing can surpass the wonderful
luxuriance of vegetable life — beautiful flowering Cacti, Mimosas, Eu-
phorbias, one like a medieval corona lucis, which gives a peculiar aspect
to the character of the vegetation. The giants of African vegetation —
the Adansonias or Boababs, and several new species of forest-trees — many
of the trees being covered with innumerable climbing plants — fill the
valleys, while the high ground and the sides of the Bogos mountains are
covered with thin woods of olives. Between the higher trees, which at
a distance appear like a thin wood, grows a luxuriant vegetation of
grasses, shrubs, and flowering j^lants of innumerable species — aloes,
Stapelias, Heliotropes, Malvae, Convolvulacse, Cassia, Jasmin, Solana-
ceas, &c.

In so varied and rich a region, animal life must be varied and
abundant. Some of the black hills of the Samchara have plants able
to shelter apes, such as the Cynocephalus hamadryas, and the lovely
gazelle {Gazella dorcas), which feeds almost exclusively on the leaves of
the Mimosa. In the broad valleys and plains of the same region, two
other antelopes are found, the Beisa {Oryx beisa), the true Oryx goat
of the ancients, and the stately gazelle of Siimmering; and in the river-
jungles the dwarf of the family, the beautiful monogamous Cephcdolo2)hus

Contemporary Literature, TIS

Hemprichiana. Large herds of oxen, tlie African zebu, browse here
for months; numerous goats, several races of hairy fat-tailed sheep
{Ovis platyura Fersica) enliven the dark hills. The great lion (Leo
Senegalensis) comes from his mountains to hunt here; the leopard
{Leopardus antlquorum) is also met with, though rarely : the Samchara
is, however, the true home of the African hunting leopard ( Cynailurus
guttatus). The jackal {Canis mesomelas), the fox {Canis famelicus),
several varieties of dog, among others the wolf-hound (Cams Anthus),
which occasionally comes from the western steppes, the painted dog
(Lycaon pictits), the tiger-wolf or spotted hysena (Hymna crocuta), the
ichneumons {Ilerpestes fasciatus and gracilis) ^ the civet and ginster cats
{Viverra civetta and Abyssinica), the curious long-eared hare {Lepus
Abyssinica), peculiar earth-squirrels, the "father of the thorns," as the
Arabs call the prickly swine (Hystrixcristata)^ show the richness of the
mammalian fauna. In the rainy season, herds of elephants descend
from the highlands for a day or tv:ointo the Samchara; and in the thick
bush of some valleys troops of a peculiar pachydermatous animal,
Phacochceriis uEliani (Riippel), are frequently met Avith. Even the
crocodile is not unknown in these regions, as Dr. Brehm found one in a
small pool of water.

The birds, fish, lizards, snakes, fresh-water tortoises, and other
classes of animals are equally various. Dr. Brehm, in speaking of the
luxuriance of animal and vegetable life, says that, in the small territory
of Bogosland, a society of naturalists might find work for many years
before they could exhaust the treasures of life with which it abounds,
and this though Riippel and Eussegger have gleaned there.

The time which Dr. Brehm was able to spend in Abyssinia was too
short to enable him to do much ; and unluckily he caught a fever there,
which prevented him from making full use even of that short time. He
has nevertheless collected a great deal of valuable information upon
the habits of the mammalia and birds, a subject which is liable to be
forgotten by closet naturalists, who necessarily give all their thoughts
to morphology and development. He gives us very detailed measure-
ments of the birds. As he says he is likely to give us some similar obser-
vations on Egyptian animals, Ave Avish he would extend his measure-
ments to the mammalia also. Such measurements of the animals of the
valley of the Nile may prove of great value in archaeological researches,
and may throw a light on the infiuence of time upon form.

85. M. Koechlin-Schlumberger has published the results of a ncAv
investigation of the so-called transition rocks of the Vosges, Avhich have
been already the subject of numerous investigations, especially by M.
Delesse. The intellectual vis inerticB is Avell illustrated by the growth of
opinion upon the subject of metamorphism of rocks. Not many years
ago, it Avas thought that all metallic ores came up in a state of fusion
or vapour; even rock-salt Avas held to be a rock of igneous origin as
late as 1847, Avhen Karsten published his Lehrbuclt der Salinenhinde ;
perhaps there are yet persons Avho believe that rock-salt came up in a
state of fusion. Step by step the igneous origin of most rocks has been

741< Contemporai'u Literature.

given up, and the slow metamorphosing action of water admitted to be
sufficient. But when a phenomenon was found to be incompatible with
the hypothesis of fusion, geologists assumed the water to be hot, or in a
state of vapour. M. Delesse, for instance, assumes that granite came
up as a magma of mineral matter and water, out of which the granite
separated, while the mother-liquor from which it separated penetrated
the surrounding rocks and metamorphosed them. M. Koechlin-Schlum-
berger has, however, come to the conclusion that not only are mica
schiste, gneiss, minette, and similar altered rocks, but that granite,
syenite, eurite, and even in some instances melaphyre also, are the result
of the slow metamorphosis of Avater and molecular movement of pala3-
ozoic slates and grits. According to the energy and deviation of the
action, according to the composition and the structure of the original
rock, this slow action can produce different types, such as minette, mica-
slate, gneiss or granite, and other varieties.

Why is it that writers on the metamorphism of rocks think it
necessary to write such big books ? M. Koechlin-Schlumberger has no
doubt made very many careful observations ; but, after reading over his
307 quarto pages, we could not help thinking that if he had rewritten
the work in 100 pages it would have been greatly to the benefit of his
facts. If observers expect to be read they should condense the accounts
of their observations.

The fossil part, which is illustrated by thirty plates, contains the de-
scription of fifteen species of plants, which appear to be finely preserved.
They belong to the genera Calamites, Knorria, Stigmaria, Tubercules,
Ancistrophyllum, Didymophyllum, Sagenaria, Cyclopteris, Sphenopteris,
and Dadoxylon.

The remainder of the volume contains papers on physics and
meteorology, by Professor Bertin. The former are chiefly on electro-
magnetism. In one of them he describes a simple mode of exhibiting
at lecture the electro-magnetic rotation of liquids. There is also a paper
by Prof. Bach on transits of Mercury, and especially on that of 1861.
Professor Fee contributes the following papers On tJie Longevity of Man ;
A letter to J/. Is. Geoffroy St.-Hilaire on the adoption of a Human King-
dom ; and On Species.

^Q. M. Coquand has published a second memoir on the geology of
the Algerian province of Constantine. The observations of M. Kenou,
M. Fournel, M. Ville, and of M. Coquand himself, had established the
existence in North Africa and the Atlas chain of representatives of the
European formations, upper silurian, of the so-called Devonian, triassic,
lias, Jurassic, cretaceous, and tertiary. M. Coquand pointed out the
existence of crystalline schists, grits, and quartzites in the first coast
ranges of mountains stretching from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Riff,
M. Ville found gray and green schists and quartzites in the province
of Oran, on the frontiers of Morocco, apparently the continuation of the
Riff Silurian rocks. Overlying the latter are coarse red conglomerates,
which M. Coquand refers to the old red sandstone; and in the collection
of the Mining Engineers at Algiers he noticed a piece of gray quartzite

Contemporary Literature. 745

full of Spirifers and Ortliis, and of unquestionable palteozoic origin, from
the Sahara to the south-east of El Agouat. The existence of rocks of
about the age of our Devonian beds is further confirmed by the dis-
covery by Overweg of grits of that age in Soudan and Fezzan. In his
first memoir on the Province of Constantine, which described only the
northern part, M. Coquand referred the brownish- red, rose-coloured,
and green marls, alternating with dolomitic limestone, quartzites, and
argillaceous slates, and resting on talcose slates, with quartz veins,
which occui' in that province, to the Triassic formation. But no fossils
have been observed in those rocks; and their stratigraphical succession
has therefore been determined only by their relations to the overlying
lias. The lower lias exists under the form of great limestone masses
crowning the chain of mountains which stretches parallel to the coast
from the Great Babor, on the confines of the provinces of Algiers and
CJonstantine, to the frontiers of Tunis. The upper lias, characterised
oy Ammonites bifrons (Brugn.), Ammonites heterophyllus (Sow.), Am-
non. radians (Schloth.), accompanied by many Belemnites, has been
tiscovered in Oran. M. Ville mentions Amm. Humphriesianus (Sow.),
1mm. Brongnarti (Sow.), Amm. cycloides (D"Orb.), which generally
"Characterise the lower Jura. The representatives of the Kelloway rock,
Oxford and ICimmeridge clays, have been noticed by M. Ville. The
<retaceous rocks have been referred to the Neocomien, Aptien (or Spee-
t)n clay), Albien or Gault, and the chalk-marl.

In his present memoir M. Coquand has established the existence
-o' the lower Jura, the middle Jura (Kelloway and Oxford series), and
tie Neocomien, in the southern part of the province of Constantine, to
vbich the memoir refers. The Neocomien is in contact with the Ox-
f(rd series near Batna, In his first memoir he had pointed out the
enstence of the coralline oolite at Djebel Taia, and the lower lias at
Sii Cheik ben Rohou. It thus appears that the high peaks of Grand
Bbor (1999 metres), Ta Babor (1960 metres), Tougourt (2101 metres),
aid the east of the Kabylie, belong to the Jurassic formation.

The cretaceous system appears to be developed on a grand scale
inthe Atlas range. M. Coquand divides his lower chalk into the fol-
\o^getages: Valenginien, Neocomien, Barremien, Urgonien, Aptien;
th last corresponding with the Speeton clay, or base of the Gault. His
midle chalk consists of the Albien, Rhotomagien, Gardonien, Caran-
toien, Angoumien, Mornasien, Provencien etages. The last etage is
chracterised by Hippurites organisans (Desm.) and Hippurites cornu-
vacinum (Bronn) ; his middle chalk consequently corresponds with the
uper green sand, or Cenomanien series, including, however, the zone
of iudists characterised by the fossils just named, which is some-
tiiEs included in the Turonien or chalk- marl series. His upper chalk
sees includes the Coniacian, Santonien, Campanien, and Dordonien
etms, including the Turonien or chalk-marl series, and the Senonien
or rhite-chalk series. He finds the whole of these sixteen etages of the
creiceous period represented in Africa. The Atlas range must there-
fore be considered to afford the most complete example of the series
Jbicvn. It is probable that there too cretaceous rocks attain their

746 Contemporary Literature,

maximum of elevation; for the highest ranges of the chain in Eastern
Algeria, the Auress Mountains, — one of the peaks of which, the Djebel
Cheliah, attains 2312 metres, — the Amamra, and the Bou Arif, appear
to belong to the chalk-marl and white chalk.

Rocks of the tertiary epoch are largely developed on the flanks of
the Atlas mountains bordering the Sahara, The lower tertiary is com-
posed of two distinct Stages, the first of which M. Coquand is inclined to
refer to the age of the Soissons sands, and the second to that of the cal-
caire grossier of Paris. Great saliferous deposits are associated with the
African tertiary rocks, the most remarkable of which is the mountain
of salt in the southern part of the province of Constantine, called Djebel
el Mehlh ; this mass appears to be Eocene. M. Coquand thinks that all
the tertiary rocks between the Djebel Dir and the limits of the Sahara
present considerable analogy with those of the department of Aude at
the base of the Eastern Pyrenees. The Pleiocene period is rejjresentet?
in the neigbourhood of Constantine by three etages, a conglomerat<
about 150 metres thick, gypseous clays containing helix 100 metrei
thick, and a limestone and red clay 130 metres thick, or in all 38f
metres. In the valley of Smendou the limestones of the last etage coi*
tain Unio, Planorbis, and Lymnsea. This Pleiocene conglomerate fornj
a steep barrier to the Sahara, and appears to pass under the sands <f
the desert, as is proved by the borings made at Kabash, Ziban, anl
Oned R'ir. As these Subapennine beds are thrown up nearly verticd
along the whole southern declivity of the Atlas, dipping always to tb
Sahara, while they form the horizontal floor of the latter, it is evidejt
that the last great elevation of the chain took place after the depositi(ii
of the Subapennine beds. M. Coquand accordingly concludes that tie
elevation of the Atlas belongs to the system of the principal chain )f
the Alps.

The analogy between the geology of North Africa and that of te
Iberian peninsula is most striking, and especially between the Ca-
tabriau chain and the Atlas. The elevation in great part of both thee
chains at the close of the Pleiocene period is evidently connected vAh
the drainage of the Sahara, the greater part of which is below the leel
of the sea. The fresh-water Pleiocene tertiaries of Constantine ^M^e
obviously contemporaneous with those of the valleys of the Ebro, Dufo,
and Tagus. The commencement of the series of elevations which -j^o-
duced the plateau of Spain and the Atlas chain must have been qn-
nected with the barring out of the ocean from the Aralo- Caspian baiml
The coordination of the strategraphical succession of rocks forming ihol
boundary of the great basin, which stretches from the Straits of Qb-^
raltar to the mountains of Thian Shan, w^henever we may be in a psi-
tion to make it, will throw great light upon the changes which precded
the human period. I

The province of Constantine appears to offer beautiful example of
surface action producing valleys. From the nature of the climate all
the rivers are torrential ; and consequently the denudation is not prodced
by that slow sloping down of a country into open valleys that Ave s^ in
the regions where rain is not periodic. The torrents cut down jeep

Contemporary Literature. 747

ravines with escarped sides, like the cations of the Colorado, and the
escobws of North Spain. One of the most remarkable of these is the
ravin hleu^ near Constantine. Now that this subject is much discussed
among geologists, we are sorry M. Coquand did not devote some atten-
tion to it, as well as to other questions of physical geology.

In 1851 themmiber of fossil species cited by the first explorers, M.
Renou and M. Fournel, was only 31 . M. Coquand's first memoir brought
that number up to 142. The present memoir and short supplement
contains a catalogue of 635, of which 306 are new, and of which de-
scriptions and figures are given. The plates of fossils appear to be
executed with great care, but we cannot say the same of the diagrams.
The latter are not artistic, nor are they calculated to give accurate
notions. The diagrams in the author's " Traite des Roches" are of the
same kind; so that he seems to have adopted this style on principle.
We strongly advise him to give it up. Maps of Algiers are not so
common out of France as in it; and consequently the study of the book
would have been greatly facilitated if it had been accompanied by a
plain topographical map showing the hydrography and orography of the
province.

37. Dr. Kluge of Chemnitz, pending the completion of a work of
some extent upon the subject of volcanic phenomena, has published a
small book on the synchronism and antagonism of volcanic eruptions.
It is based on a catalogue of about 1450 eruptions, which he has con-
structed from the catalogues of Herr Hofi", the Messrs. Mallet, and M.
Perrey, with considerable additions of his own. By synchronism is to
be understood the simultaneous activity of two or more volcanoes in
different chains. The author distinguishes several kinds of synchronism.
For instance, the activity may have commenced at the same moment ;
or it may not have been noticed whether one or more days intervened
between the outbreaks; or the synchronism may be confined to the out-
breaks occurring in the same year ; and finally, the synchronism of the
activity of two or more volcanoes may have extended over several
periods. By antagonism is meant the alternate action of two or
more volcanoes, or systems of volcanoes, of which the volcanic groups
of Kamtschatka, the Kurile chain, and Japan on the one side, and the
Aleutian Islands and Alaschka on the other, have offered a beautiful
example since the year 1786. Dr. Kluge has arrived at a very remark-
able conclusion, which is specially interesting in connection with the
dynamical theory of heat. He thinks himself justified in assuming
that certain years are distinguished by very considerable accumulations
of earthquakes and A'^olcanic eruptions, while others are more or less free
from them ; and that those years of eruption return in pretty regular
periods of time; so that they may be referred to a mean period of eleven
and a half years. Herr Schwabe has shown that the solar spots in-
crease in number for five or six years, and decrease again for about the
same period ; so that they appear to follow a regular period of ten to
twelve years. Herr Lamont came to the conclusion that the increase
and decrease of the amplitude of the diurnal variation of the magnetic

748 Contemporary Literature,

needle was subject to a certain periodicity, the period being about ten
years. Father Secchi and others pointed out that the periods of maxima
and minima of these observations coincided with the periods of maxi-
mum and minimum of Schwabe's observations on the solar spots. The
observations of Arago, from 1820 to 1835, reduced by M. Barral, con-
firm this view — that is, that an increase in the spots gives an increase
in the amplitude of variation. Dr. Kluge now thinks that his period
of earthquake and eruptive activity coincides with that of the solar
spots, and the amplitude of diurnal variation ; the maximum of solar
spots corresponding to a minimum of earthquakes and eruptions, and
the maxima of the two latter to the minima of the former.

Dr. Kluge has attempted to represent graphically the eruptions
from 1600 to 1860; the ordinates represent the number of eruptions,
the abscissae the years. He first represents the number for the whole
earth, then that of the northern, southern, eastern, and western hemi-
spheres. A glance at these curves shows that, although the obser-
vations are sufficient to indicate an apparent periodicity, they are not
sufficient to give its relative approximate value anterior to about the
year 1820. It appears that the year 1852 was the year of maximum
disturbance for the whole earth, and for each hemisphere, while the
year 1835, which has a maximum for the whole earth almost as great
as that of 1852, and has also a maximum in the southern and western
hemispheres, exhibits a minimum in the northern and eastern. The
year 1855 had a large number of disturbances in the N. and W., and
comparatively few in the S. ; 1857 had also a maximum in the N. and E.
On referring to Herr Schwabe's table, we find that the year 1835 does
not coincide with the minimum of solar spots ; in 1833 there were 33
groups observed, and 139 days without spots; while in 1835 there were
173 groups of spots, and only 18 days on which spots were not seen.
The year 1837 had the maximum number of spots for the period,
namely, 333 groups. In 1851 the number of groups was 151 ; we
have not at hand any later observations than the year just named, but
we may consider that year to be the second before the minimum. So that
neither of the years of greatest maximum disturbance coincide with
the minimum of solar spots ; the maximum of 1835 occurred two years
after a minimum of spots, and that of 1851 two years before. The year
1823 appears to have been a year of minimum spots; and it was also
one of a comparatively high maximum of eruptive activity. It may be
that the seeming coincidence between eruptive action and the pheno-
mena of solar atmosphere and terrestrial magnetic disturbance is only
accidental. The subject is, however, well worthy of future investigation;
and we trust that Dr. Kluge's book will help to direct attention to this
apparent connection between the most mysterious of terrestrial phe-
nomena and cosmical agencies.

38. Compounds of Cyanogen have latterly become so numerous that
many of them are omitted from even the largest treatises of chemistry.
Professor Kiihn of Leipzig has therefore perlbrmed a useful labour in
giving us a monograph on Cyanogen and its inorganic compounds. It

Contemporary Literature, 749

seems to have been prepared with great care and labour, and it is con-
sequently with reluctance that we notice what we consider three serious
defects in it. The first is, that his mode of tabulating his formulae is
very confusing ; it does not enable the reader to seize properly the
analogies which different compounds present, and consequently the
groups into which they arrange themselves. The second is, that the
results of actual analyses ought to have been more frequently given, if
not in the case of every simple cyanide, at least in that of every com-
plex one. In some instances, as in the case of the nitro-prussides, for
which no satisfactory formulae have yet been proposed, the author has
of course given the experimental data. We think these data, however,
are just as essential in the case of compounds about the formulas of
which there is now no difference of opinion, but which may be un-
settled any day by the introduction of new atomic weights. The third
defect in the book is the absence of references to the memoirs of the
authors who are quoted, and this is the greatest of all, because it con-
oems one of the chief uses of such a monograph.

39. Professor Frey, who is already favourably known by his good
handbook of Histology and Histochemistry, has published another on
the microscope and microscopical manipulation. The subject divides
itself into three parts: the instrument itself; the reagents, injecting,
preserving, and other auxiliary apparatus ; and the preparation and
examination of tissues, secretions, and excretions. The processes are
well described, and in sufficient detail to enable the student to repeat
them ; and we have no doubt that any student who would carefully go
through the course of observations laid down in the book would be in
the right way to become a good observer. The wood-engravings are
excellent ; and the author has availed himself of all the most recent
information. He has given at the end a price-list of microscopes, lenses,
and auxiliary apparatus, made by the chief makers in Europe. We notice
one defect in this otherwise excellent book. The author has only said a
few words about the polariscope, and not one word about a goniometer.
He seems to think the subject difficult, and outside the range of studies
of medical men, and to belong rather to optics. This objection applies
equally to the microscope itself. The value of the polariscope and
micro-goniometer in physiological investigations cannot be over-esti-
mated ; indeed, if ever accurate analysis of animal and vegetable secre-
tions is to be attained, it will be by the use of both those instruments.
By a few measurements of the angles of a single crystal, and an examina-
tion of it by polarised light, we may determine the nature of the substances
contained in a drop or two of a secretion, while the ordinary chemical
processes would require many ounces, and even then an analysis might
not be practicable. The part relating to microscopic photography re-
quires to be enlarged, as the student should not be obliged to purchase
two books on the same subject.

40. Professor Yolkmanu has commenced the publication of a series
of investigations in physiological optics. The subjects treated of in the

ToO Contemporary Literature,

first part are of great importance in psychopbysics, and are — 1. Irradi-
ation ; 2. The relation between the force of the excitation and the force
of the sensation ; 3. The smallest area of independent sensation, and
isolated nervous conduction ; 4. The question whether the smallest
relative differences of magnitude which we are able to distinguish have
a constant value ; and 5. Original and acquired faculties in the percep-
tion of space.

Irradiation is the term applied to the visual enlargement which
takes place in the size of a bright spot on a dark ground. j\I. Plateau
explained this phenomenon by supposing that the excitation of the
retina produced by a bright surface exceeded the boundaries of the
optical image, llerr Welcker, however, proved it to be due to a purely-
physical cause, namely, dispersion. Professor Volkmann showed that dark
objects on bright grounds irradiate also, that is, appear enlarged at the
expense of the surrounding bright part In this case also the irradi-
ation must proceed from the bright part, and yet, instead of diminishing
the black space, it enlarges it ; we may call this phenomenon negative
irradiation. The explanation which he gave at the time, though correct
in principle, because it is certainly a phenomenon of dispersion, and can
be corrected by suitable spectacles, is insufficient in details ; and he has
accordingly taken up the subject again. His first object was naturally
to determine the amount of dispersion, and then to discover the causes
of it. We must refer to the memoir itself for the description of the
experiments, the grounds of their trustworthiness, and the numerical
results. The following are some of the conclusions at which he has
arrived — 1. The amount of irradiation depends upon the size of the
image on the retina, and both change inversely : 2. White lines on a
black ground irradiate more than black lines upon a white ground ;
that is, positive irradiation is always greater than the corresponding
negative : 3. The extent of the irradiation is dependent on the difference
between the luminous intensity of the object and of the ground; that ^
is, as this difference increases the strength of the irradiation diminishes : ^
4. The extent of perceptible irradiation is dependent on the amount of
dispersion, and this relationship appears to be of the same kind as that
just stated for difference of intensity : 5. The amount of irradiation is
subject even in healthy eyes to very considerable individual variations :
6. Ileflection on the opposition between the object and the ground in m
the field of view influences irradiation; that is, the physical phenomenon «
of dispersion is influenced by psychological causes. Professor Volkmann
considers that when two unequally illuminated fields placed alongside
each other are presented to the eye, the one which makes the predomi-
nant impression on the soul will be enlarged. This predominance de-
pends on two conditions, namely, brightness in opposition to darkness,
and the object in opposition to the ground. He thinks that from this
point of view all phenomena of irradiation can be explained, especially
of black on a white ground, which cannot be explained by merely A
physical causes. J

Plerr Fechner, as is well known, considers that within a large inter-
val of brightness the perceptible differences of luminous sensation ap-

Contemporary Literature, 751

proximately correspond to constant fractions of the brightness ; and he
has used this view to frame a general hnv, which he calls a psycho-
physical law, and which appears to apply to other perceptions of the
senses also : thus differences in the pitch of notes appear to us equally
great when the differences of the times of vibration are equal parts of
the whole period of vibration. According to Herr E. H. Weber's in-
vestigations, this law appears to apply also to our power of recognising
differences of weight and linear measurements. This law appears to
assume that the extent of the illuminated surface of the retina exerts no
influence worth considering on the intensity of the sensation. Indeed,
Steinheil's experiments showed that in photometrical measurements the
magnitude and position of the illuminated surfaces towards each other
exerted no decisive influence on the judgment as to their equality of
intensity. Herr Fechner accordingly did not include the element of the
extent of the surface of excitation in his formula ; nor, as Professor Yolk-
mann thinks, does Professor Helmholtz believe it to be of much import-
ance, as he does not allude to its omission in Herr Fechner's formula,
in the elaborate criticism which he has given of it in his Physiologische
Optik. Professor Volkmann gives us in the present work a series of expe-
riments, which proves beyond doubt that the extension of the excitation
does exert an appreciable influence on the intensity of the sensation.

Herr E. H. Weber calls that portion of the skin and retina which is
connected with the sensorium by only one nerve- fibre a sensitive circle.
He considers that the perception of distance is due to the simultaneous
excitation of two such circles, separated by one or more similar circles.
Every one knows that the magnitude of the smallest perceptible distance
which can be recognised by the skin or the retina varies with the parts,
being a maximum where the nervous fibres are fewest. Herr Weber
looks upon the skin, retina, and other surfaces of sensation, as mosaics
of sensational units ; and he consequently regards our conceptions of
magnitude as built up, so to say, of the individual sensations of those
units, so that, the greater the number of units excited, the greater the
space perceived. This consequence he has supported by experiment.
We may also deduce from such a theory of sensation, that if a part of
the nervous fibres in a given spot lose their conducting power, the per-
ception of magnitude which would be derived from such a spot would
be diminished. Professor Volkmann gives experiments which appear to
confirm this important conclusion. The application of Weber's theory
to vision encountered many difficulties, which at first seemed fatal to it.
Herr Heinrich Muller has, however, shown that the layer of bacilli and
conij or what constitutes what was called Jacobs' membrane, is that
which directly receives the excitation of light; and histological investi-
gations have further shown that Sommering's yellow spot contains
nothing but coni, and must consequently be the most sensitive spot in
the retina. As these coiii are the ends of nervous fibres, and are con-
sidered by anatomists as histological elements, their sections should be
the smallest units of sensitive capacity. According to KoUiker, the
diameter of the cones is from 0-0045 millimetres to O'OOGTm. ; MUl-
ler's determination gives 00040 m. to 00060 m.; those of Professors

752 -Contemporary Literature,

Gerlach and Frey coincide almost perfectly with the numbers just given.
Herr Schultze found the cones in the centre of the yellow spot to be
about half the size of those on the margin, while in i\iQ fovea centralis
they measured only 0-0022 m. to 0'0027 m., results which have been fully
confirmed by Herr H. Miiller. If, then, these numbers represent the
diameters of the units of distinct perceptive sensation, experiments on
the smallest recognisable distances become decisive tests of Avhat a his-
tological element is on the one hand, or of Weber's theory on the other.
If, for instance, excitations which fall within the area of one and the
same cone could reproduce distinguishable perceptions, a contradiction
would be established between both. Professor Volkmann gives us a
number of determinations of the magnitude of the smallest percepti-
ble distances, which show, in the first place, that the power of the
eye to distinguish small objects is very different with different indi-
viduals ; and consequently that Ehrenberg's statement tliat there is a
normal power for distinguishing small objects in human eyes, which
only seldom and slightly varies, is erroneous: and in the second place,
that without exception they are sm<iller than the diameters of the cones,
according to Kolliker and H. Miiller, — in one case eleven times smaller,
and consequently at least five times smaller than Schuhze's measure-
ments. The distinct perception of distance can consequently arise from
the excitation of a single cone. Determinations founded on the smallest
perceptible differences, the smallest recognisable figures, and the small-
est perceptible motions, led to a similar conclusion. Professor Volkmann
consequently concludes that anatomists are wrong in their idea of a his-
tological element. We believe the idea of homologous physiological series
suggests a theory of nervous action far more complete than any yet
proposed.

In the case of intense excitations, the differences of excitation appear
to remain the same, so long as the same ratio continues to exist betAveen
the excitations. Herr E. H. Weber considers that this rule extends to
large excitations ; so that the smallest perceptible difference of magni-
tude would be given by a constant ratio of the two dimensions compared.
Fechner has experimentally shown that so far as the sensation of touch
is concerned, this rule does not appear to apply. On the other hand,
experiments made with the eye have been found almost always to cor-
respond with Weber's rule. Professor Volkmann's fom-th series of
experiments related to this point. They are not decisive, and the author
himself considers them only as tentative. We must refer to the memoir
for the account of them, and for the interesting observations on the
author's fifth subject — original and acquired faculties in perceptions of
space. It is unnecessary to point cut that, independently of their physi-
cal and physiological importance the experiments of Professor Volk-
mann have a direct bearing on stellar astronomy, in connection with the
relative magnitude of stars, &c.

[ 753 ]

CURRENT EVENTS.

Ox the Jitli of February the House of Commons entered upon its
sixth session. In the present state of public affairs this circumstance

is something more than a chronological fact ; it is one
The Gro-^^m- y^\^[Q]^ n^ay exercise, and indeed has already exercised.
Opposition. ^^^ important influence on the action of our political

machinery. A defeat of the government at this stage
of parliamentary existence must almost inevitably be followed by a
general election. There are times when the consciousness of such a
necessity tends to strengthen the hands of the opposition, since it
deprives the administration of the power of using, to any purpose,
the threat of a dissolution. In the present instance, however, it seems
to have a contrary effect. The Tory leaders have to consult the
country as well as the House of Commons ; and though Mr. Disraeli is
skilful enough in feeling the pulse of the latter, he is rarely happy in his
diagnosis of the former. But at this moment it is the country which
is all important to him. The confidence of an expiring Parliament
would be of little value ; for it would be no real index of the temper
of its successor. A successful appeal to the country requires either
personal popularity or a definite policy; and in a race with Lord
Palmerston, Lord Derby is nowhere as to the first requisite, while he is
at best only on a level with him as to the last. So long as he confines
himself to finding fault, this latter deficiency does not make itself felt.
Criticism is the legitimate function of an opposition ; and it would be
strange if, amid the confusions of two continents, there were any difiS-
culty in discovering fitting occasions for its exercise. But when criti-
cism has to be replaced by action, the want of a policy becomes serious.
There is little to be gained by a change of ministry when it involves
only a change of faces. And yet the promises which the opposition
have been holding out for the last twelve months amount to nothing
more than this. They propose to play the same parts as their prede-
cessors, though they ho^j^e to sustain them better; they accept the
substance of Lord Russell's despatches, but think they could improve
on his style ; they are quite prepared to carry out the programme
of the government, if they may vary it by a few imperceptible altera-
tions. They forget that imperceptible alterations are rarely worth the
trouble of making. It can hardly be wise to turn out a ministry
without some definite promise of a new i^olicy.

It would have been very difficult, however, for the Tories to take a
more decided line. For some time past public attention has been ex-
clusively occupied with foreign affairs, and, consequently, any effective
attack on the government must be directed against its foreign policy.
Now, if a general election is to turn upon foreign policy, there must be
a very simple issue submitted to the electors. Constituencies are not
likely to trouble themselves with the details of despatches ; they must
be shown that the attitude of the government has been pacific when it

754 Current Events.

ought to have been warlike, or warlike when it ought to have been
pacific. And this is just what on two at least of the subjects now or
lately in dispute — Poland and America — the opposition leaders have
declined to attempt. As to the first, they were even less dis])osed to
fight than the cabinet itself. All their attacks upon Lord Russell's
diplomacy resolved themselves into this — not that he did too little, but
that he said too much. They quarrelled with him, not because his
thoughts Avere smoother than oil, but because his words were very
swords. Still, whatever may be the demerits of this or that despatch,
peace has been preserved ; and it would be difficult to persuade the nation
to displace the men who have preserved it, merely to make room for
others who, even if we listen to their own account of themselves, would
only have preserved it better. In the case of America, the govern-
ment professed to hold the balance even between the contending parties;
and it was open to the opposition either to contest the fact or to oppose
the theory — either to deny that we were, or to assert that we had no
business to be, neutral. Lord Derby chose the former course. He
expressed entire acquiescence in the policy proclaimed by Lord
Palmerston ; but he blamed him for not carrying it out more strictly.
The best answer to accusations of this kind is to be found in the acri-
mony with which England has been assailed alike by Federals and
Confederates. And a counter proposition, to maintain a rigid neutrality
between the combatants by going to war with one of them, is hardly
more than a political bull. On the other hand, if the Tories had taken
the alternative course, and disputed the ministerial theory, they would
certainly have raised a question which deserves to be fairly fought.
But it is not easy to speak positively on the political results of such a
contest. It is a subject upon which the nation is divided. If the
upper classes sympathise strongly with the South, the working classes,
even those of them who have suffered most by the war, sympathise no
less strongly with the North ; and although this latter feeling springs in
great measure from a non-appreciation of the merits of the quarrel, it
is not an error which it is at all easy to correct. The questions really
involved, the principles really at stake, in the American war, are not
those which lie nearest to hand ; nor could they be easily made intelli-
gible to minds unaccustomed to draw nice distinctions, or to look below
the surface of political problems. The differences between the two
parties on the subject of Schleswig-Holstein are more outspoken, since
the Tories certainly mean war if they do not actually preach it. And
in this case, it might seem, they have a better chance of carrying the
country with them. But even here there are difficulties. The extent
of English sympathy with Denmark has probably been overrated, while
there is undoubtedly very little of it in those quarters from which the
new ministry would most naturally expect support. And that Lord
Palmerston's dismissal should be demanded as the stepping-stone to a
spirited foreign policy seems almost a contradiction in terms. The
fact of a war being possible is with the mass of the people a reason for
retaining him ; the fact of our being actually engaged in one would
almost certainly be held a reason for recalling him.

Current Events, 755

If there is little change in the attitude of the opposition, there is
less in that of the ministry. Lord Palmerston's hold over the House
of Commons is not weakened ; his relations to the party he leads, and
to the party he commands without leading, remain unaltered. He
still secures the Radicals by his foreign policy, and the Tories by his
home policy. The first of these claims is, in some respects, a fair one.
The confidence so generally felt that while Lord Palmerston is in office our
relations with other countries will be satisfactory at least to ourselves, is,
in part, a just tribute to his great knowledgeofthejoerso?meZ of foreign
governments, his long experience in diplomacy, and his strong English
sympathies. But this feeling rests also on grounds which do the object
of it but little honour. Lord Palmerston has too often taken up the
political commonplace of the hour, and allowed his foreign policy to
be simply the mirror of an uninstructed and superficial liberalism. No
doubt he has often been prompted in this respect less by his regard for
popular support at home than by his affection or dislike for particular
foreign courts and particular foreign statesmen. It would be a hard
matter for him to distribute equal justice in a dispute between France
and Austria. No doubt, also, it is implied in his character and
position that he should not be a severe critic of popular enthusiasm.
It is essential to the maintenance of that diplomatic influence which
has always been one of the great objects of his ambition, that he
should be in an especial manner the exponent of the national feeling.
He is a power in the councils of Europe because he is known to have
England at his back. But after every allowance of this kind has been
made for him, there are features in his foreign policy which neither
affection, nor hatred, nor necessity can excuse. He has never used his
great influence in the country to inform the public mind. He has never
pointed out the real differences which underlie the superficial identity
of true and false liberty. He has never distinguished between just
resistance to arbitrary power, and the reckless overthrow of existing
rights and institutions from devotion to abstract ideas. He has con-
founded the revolutions of Northern and Southern Italy in a common
eulogy ; he has spoken of the two belligerents in North America as
though they merited a common blame.

Nor is the expedient by which Lord Palmerston has succeeded in
conciliating Tory acquiescence at all more creditable to him. His
power over the opposition benches of the House of Commons dates
from the session of 1860 ; and it is due to that " masterly inaction" in
domestic legislation of which the abandonment of the Reform Bill was
the most obvious instance. Undoubtedly his conduct at and since
that time has been distinguished by remarkable cleverness ; but it is
cleverness of a kind which implies the abnegation of his duties alike
as a party-leader and as the head of the administration. He hedged
cleverly ; it would have been better for his ultimate reputation if he
had stood to win or lose. The Reform Bill of 1860 was, it is true, a
thoroughly bad one. But Lord Palmerston was responsible for its
introduction and for its defects ; and he did not release himself from
either of those burdens by assuming the further responsibility of

VOL. IV. 3 d

756 Current Events,

letting it drop. We are not likely soon to see a better opportunity
for disposing of the Heform question, at least for the present genera-
tion, than the last three years have afforded. The subject had been
thoroughly discussed; the dangers with which a change is surrounded
were fully known and appreciated ; and the atmosphere out of doors
was calm enough to allow of careful enquiry and unbiassed decisions.
The importance of this latter condition can hardly be over-estimated.
The defects of the E-eform Bill of 1832 are exactly those which will
not be remedied in a time of popular excitement. A bill prepared or
debated at such a time will necessarily be single in its aim, and simple
in its provisions. It will regard only the enfranchisement of the class
which will have been agitating for enfranchisement ; and it will carry
out that object with small reference to conflicting but weaker claims.
If nothing is done to anticipate such a demand, a moment will inevita-
bly arrive when it will be put forward with extreme, and possibly irre-
sistible, violence. If it is anticipated — if, that is to say, it is conceded,
so far as it is reasonable, without grudging and without delay — the
necessity for formally refusing it, so far as it is unreasonable, will
probably never arise ; and if it should, the position of those who refuse
will be indefinitely strengthened by the fact that they have never
resisted for the sake of resistance. ISTor is it only by way of precau-
tion that such a course deserves to be adopted. Our representative
system does, in the main, fairly answer its purpose ; but it is neither
right nor prudent to disregard its obvious demerits. There is a real
call for the removal of needless anomalies, for the fuller recognition of
the new interests which have grow^n up during thirty years of unex-
ampled national progress, and, above all, for the admission into the
electoral body of that great section of the community which is still
practically excluded from it. But each of these improvements has its
corresponding danger, and ought to have its corresponding safeguard.
We must not remove anomalies which answer some good purpose, unless
we can provide for its attainment in some other way ; we must not
neglect the older interests of the country in our desire to give new ones
their due weight ; we must not so enfranchise one class as to disfran-
chise all the rest, or sacrifice to the direct representation of numbers the
indirect representation of property and education. If ever the day
comes when a Reform Bill is carried without one of these precautions
being attended to, the blame will be justly due to the statesman who
first trifled with a great question, and then traded on the results of
his trifling.

There is one party, however, which shows some symptoms, not per-
haps of change, but certainly of development. If the economists may
be judged by Mr. Bright, they have ceased for the pre-
Mr. Bright ^^^^ ^^ regard economy as the final cause of government,
a inning m. ^^^ ^^^^^ desire Parliamentary Reform not as a means
of minimising expenditure, but as a step towards the redistribution of
hiiided property. Their ideal polity can only be attained through the
medium of a social revolution. In a speech delivered at Bimiingham

Current Events, 757

on the 2Gtli of January, Mr. Bright, after describing, with considerable
truth, the deplorable condition of the agricultural labouring population,
first attributed their condition " to the unsound and unjust laws which
regulate the possession and distribution of land," and then went on thus :
'' In every country of the world, as far as I know, the possessors of land
are the possessors of power. In France .... the proprietors of the
land are the vast majority of the voting population ; and ten or twelve
years ago it was their suffrages that conferred the supreme power upon
the present Emperor of the French. If you cross the Atlantic . . . . it is
the land-owning farmers and cultivators of the great States in the in-
terior of the country who are the depositaries of political power, by
whose will alone the President of the United States is able to carry on
the gi'eat matters which belong to his exalted station. It is the same
in the Southern States ; for the great planting population, the great
owners of plantations, are the life and soul of the disorders whic^h are
now unhappily reigning in those States. And if you come to your own
country, if you come to your own county of Warwick, you will find
that two or three landowners can sit down and determine who shall
or who shall not go to Parliament, in the pretended representation of
the population of this country." It is strange that ]\Ir. Bright should
not be more on his guard against his fatal facility of illustration. By
itself the proposition, "the possessors of land are the possessors of
power," is perfectly true and perfectly harmless. But Mr. Bright in-
sists on reminding his hearers that the possession of power does not
necessarily imply the fitness to exercise it. He chooses a country in
which freedom has been judicially murdered, and another in which it
has committed suicide, and asks us to take France and the United
States as types of what by wise legislation England may yet be brought
to. Probably the process would be more difficult than he thinks ; but
as to the tendency of his proposals he is quite right in his estimate.
If the land-system of England were the same as the land-system of
France, the chances of an assimilation of the political systems of the two
X30untries would be indefinitely increased. The subdivision of land,
Avhile it distributes over a wider area the power of choosing, or more
correctly of acquiescing in, the government, distributes, in a propor-
tionate degree, the power of controlling or resisting it ; and in the latter
case distribution implies weakness. Again, such a distribution tends
necessarily to bureaucratic government. For political influence can be
attained, as a general rule, only by possessing land, or by actually
taking part in the conduct of public affairs. Men govern their country
because they have power in it, or they have power in it because they
govern it ; the aristocracy controls the executive, or the executive consti-
tutes the aristocracy. It is easier to foresee the ultimate consequences
of Mr. Bright's schemes to the political liberties of England, than to
understand how they can be intended to confer any immediate benefit
on the class of which he has constituted himself the champion. If we
suppose that primogeniture and entails are abolished, that in cases of
intestacy landed property descends to all the children equally, and
that no man can make a devise to unborn persons, the intermediate

758 Current Events.

step which is to put the agricultural labourer in possession of the soil
is still to be discovered. It is conceivable that, by a process of continual
subdivision, landholders may be reduced to the position of labourers ;
but it is less easy to divine the reflex action by which the labourers are
to be raised to the position of landholders. There may be more estates
in the market ; and the wealthy manufacturer, or the successful mer-
chant, who wishes to invest his capital in land, may do so on easier
terms. But the element of capital will never be altogether eliminated
from the transaction; and so long as the transfer of land requires, as a
preliminary condition, the payment of the purchase money, the most
formidable impediment to the transmutation of labourers into pro-
prietors will continue to operate. But the errors of the advocate ought
not to obscure the importance of his cause. It is quite true that the
condition of the agricultural labourers in many parts of the country
demands the most serious consideration. But this consideration must
be devoted to their real wants, not to their wants as painted by the
imagination of a political agitator. The grievance of the labourer is
not that he cannot buy land ; it is that he cannot get a decent cottage
to live in, and that he has only the workhouse to look forward to in
his old age. The first of these evils may, perhaps, be remedied by an
alteration in the law of settlement. The other requires, in the first
place, some modification in a Poor Law which, after all the improve-
ments of 1834, seems still to encourage too much dependence upon
parish relief, and, in the next place, the provision of increased oppor-
tunities for the exercise of individual frugality and forethought.

The latter of these ends has already been greatly furthered by the
institution of post-office savings' banks, and Mr. Gladstone now asks

leave to take a still more important step in the same
Ann^tieTEm direction. By the Government Annuities Bill, which

was brought in on the 11th and read a second time on
the loth of February, the Commissioners for extinguishing the National
Debt are empowered to grant deferred annuities, commencing at the
age of sixty, in consideration of monthly or weekly payments ; and
also, for the same consideration, to grant assurances on lives for sums
not exceeding lOOZ. On the 7th of March, in an adjourned debate on
going into committee, Mr. Gladstone explained the principle of the
bill, and justified its introduction by an unsparing exposure of the
position and prospects of many of the smaller insurance and friendly
societies. To the first of his proposals, the grant of deferred annuities,
little opposition has been made, the only change introduced by it into
the Annuities Act already in ojieration being that the commissioners
are authorised to accept payments in less than annual instalments ; but
the clause enabling the government to grant life assurances has been
warmly contested. Two principal objections are made to it : one,
that it will teach the people to look to the government to do for them
what they ought to do for themselves ; the other, that it will affect
the ])rosperity, if not the existence, of private societies. To both of
these charges there is an obvious answer. The bill does not empower

Current. Events, 759

tlie government to do for the people wliat they ought to do for them-
selves ; it only enables the government to give them that which they
cannot obtain for themselves,, and the absence of which too often
renders all their self-help unavailing. The large commercial associa-
tions in which the Hfe insurances of the upper and middle classes are
mostly effected can offer a substantial security for the money invested
in them. If a man insures his life in an unsound office, it is usually
l)ecause he is deluded by ojffers of small premiums and large profits.
But the poor man has no opportunity of examining the position of the
society which is to guarantee the safety of his hardly-earned savings.
He nmst make his choice among those which he finds established in
his own neighbourhood, and by the agents of which he is canvassed.
Such associations may be unsafe without being fraudulent. They
cannot, in many instances, command the scientific accuracy which can
alone insure them a sound constitution, or the knowledge of business
which ought to govern the management of their affairs and the invest-
ment of their capital. Where these requisites are united in a society, it
has no cause to fear government competition. To a large class of
persons good terms with fair security will always be more attractive
than inferior terms even with absolute security. In a society where
these conditions are wanting, every additional year of existence does
but enlarge the area over which its inevitable bankruptcy must
extend.

On the 18th of February Sir George Grey introduced a bill for the
Amendment of the Acts relating to Penal Servitude, founded on

the Report of the Royal Commission presented at the
ZnendmeSS ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ session. The operation of the existing acts,

which formed the subject-matter of the commissioners'
enquiries, is briefly as follows : A convict sentenced to penal servitude
has first to undergo about nine months of separate confinement, during
which he is employed in some trade. At the end of this period he is
removed to another prison, where he is employed in associated labour
on public works. A portion of this latter term is remitted in the case
of all convicts " whose conduct in prison Is such as not to deprive them
of this indulgence." The proportion which this remission bears to the
whole term of imprisonment varies, according to the length of sentence,
from one-sixth to one-third. Those convicts who obtain it are dis-
charged with a "ticket of leave," on which is endorsed certain condi-
tions amounting to a threat of revocation in the event of the holder
associating with bad characters, or being convicted of any new offence,
" unless the punishment for that offence extends beyond the term of his
former sentence." The first of these conditions has hardly ever been
enforced ; and even if the convict " should be unfortunate enough to
incur a fresh conviction, the unexpired period under his first sentence
will probably be merged in the period to which he will be condemned
under the second." Besides this remission of a part of the sentence,
a convict may earn during his imprisonment a weekly gratuity for good
conduct and another for industry, — the two together amounting, at most,

760 Current Events,

to fifteen pence a week, — wliicli are paid to him in one sum or in instal-
ments after his discharge from prison. About six hundred convicts are
selected every year for transportation to AVestern Australia, Here they
are considered eligible for a ticket of leave at a much earlier period of their
sentence than in England, and after a certain time to a conditional par-
don, "the only condition being that they shall not return to the United
Kingdom." In Ireland the law relating to penal servitude is the same
as in England, but it is administered with some imjjortant differences.
The separate confinement is somewhat more severe ; and there are two
intermediate prisons to which convicts are removed in the last stage of
their sentence, in order to test, by a greater amount of freedom, their
fitness for being discharged on a ticket of leave. When so discharged,
they are placed under the supervision of the police, and obliged to
report themselves at the constabulary station of their district on the
first of every month. The revocation of the license is rigidly enforced
in every case where the conditions endorsed on it are known to have
been violated.

A majority of the commissioners recommended that the minimum
sentence of penal servitude should for the future be seven years instead
of three ; that the remission of a portion of the sentence should be
regarded as a reward, to be earned by industry and good behaviour,
not as a right, to be forfeited by idleness and misconduct ; that all
male convicts, not disqualified for such removal, should be sent to
Western Australia during the latter part of their punishment ; that
those so disqualified and released on ticket of leave at home should be
placed under strict supervision ; that their license should be suspended
'or revoked on conviction of a breach of the conditions; and that when
it is revoked the holder should be sent back to prison to undergo the
whole of the original sentence which remained unexpired on his dis-
charge, in addition to any fresh punishment he may have incurred.
From this report the Lord Chief Justice dissented; and he explained his
reasons for so doing in a separate memorandum. He recommended
that the preliminary separate confinement should be increased to
eighteen months, the maximum length of imprisonment in an ordinary
prison ; that during the whole sentence the " punishment should be
made as rigorous as is consistent with health of body and mind ; that
being rendered thus rigorous, it should not be prolonged beyond what
is necessary to deter from similar crime ; but that, the sentence of
the judge once pronounced, the punishment should be suffered for
the full and entire period of the sentence."

Sir George Grey's bill adopts the recommendations of the commis-
sioners, with the substitution of five years as the minimum period of
penal servitude, and the restriction of the convicts to be sent to Western
Australia to their present numbers ; a partial concession to the strongly
expressed hostility on the part of the colonists on the eastern and
southern coasts to the maintenance of a penal settlement even at a
distance of 2000 miles from their frontier.

The Danish Patent of the 30th of March was revoked on the 4th of

Current Events, 761

December. If this step liad been taken earlier, tbe Schleswig-Holstein
difficulty might have been settled without a war; but it
Germany ^,^^ delayed until the Federal execution had become
Denmark. inevitable, until the feeling of Germany had been em-
bittered by the development of the incorporation policy
in the Constitution of November, and until the grievance of a disputed
succession had been imported into the constitutional quarrel. During
the greater part of this interval Lord Russell was still smarting under
his experience of the preceding autumn; and as late as the 31st of
August he declared that "her Majesty's Government had no intention
of making any communication to the Danish Government after the
reception which had been given to his suggestion of last year." But a
policy of verbal abstention is not congenial to Lord Russell's temper,
and though Denmark had to be punished by the loss of his advice, there
was no reason why it should be withheld from Germany. On the 16th
of September he suggested "an offer of good offices on the part of
Great Britain and France," based on four "uncontrovertible proposi-
tions: 1. that Denmark owes to Germany a complete written ex-
planation with respect to the bearing of the ordinance of the 30th of
March on the laws, and especially on the financial position, of the
Duchies of Holstein and Lauenburg ; 2. that Germany cannot justly
order a Federal execution with a view to promote or to prevent the
establishment of a Constitution common to Denmark, Schleswig, Hol-
stein, and Lauenburg ; 3. that the affairs of Schleswig can only be
treated between Germany and Denmark as a matter of international
concern; 4. that as a matter of international concern, it is to be
desired that Germany would lay down with precision what are the
rights she claims for the German inhabitants of Schleswig, and in
what manner any engagements made on their behalf have been, in the
opinion of the German Diet, violated by Denmark." This proposal was
declined by M. Drouyn de Lhuys on the plea that he " had no inclina-
tion to place France in the same position with reference to Germany
as she had been placed with regard to Russia." On the 29th of
September, after the presentation of the Report of the joint Committees
recommending the Diet to proceed to Federal execution. Lord Russell
wrote to the English minister at Frankfort. " Had the Report of the
Committee," he says, " gone no further than to affirm that the Royal
Letters Patent do not fulfil the resolutions of the Diet as to the Duchy
of Holstein ; that the Duke of Holstein has no right to dispose of the
money of Holstein without the consent of its Representatives ; that he
has no right to enact laws for Holstein, but in concurrence with the
Diet of Holstein; that the long delays of the Danish Government to
come to a satisfactory arrangement have made Federal execution
necessary ; — her Majesty's Government, although they would still have
lamented the interference of the German Diet at this particular time,
could not have denied that the principles asserted were the sound,
and indeed the fundamental, principles of constitutional government."
But he objects to any interference on the part of the German Con-
federation in questions affecting the Constitution of the whole Danish

762 Current Events,

monarchy ; lie denies that a mihtary occupation of Holstein based on
such grounds would be a proper Federal execution ; and, inasmuch as
'^her Majesty's Government could not be indifferent to the bearing of
such an act upon Denmark, and upon European interests," he earnestly
entreats the Diet to "submit the questions in dispute between Germany
and Denmark to the mediation of other powers."

By the early part of October he had determined once more to
give Denmark the benefit of his counsel. He recommended that no
opposition should be offered to the execution so long as it was confined
to Holstein, and that the Patent of the 30th of March should be re-
voked, or at least suspended. Sir A. Paget found M. Hall not at all
disposed to adopt conciliatory measures, or even to regard the prospect
of a war with Germany with much apprehension, his opinion being
that " the present moment was perhaps as favourable for Denmark and
as unfavourable for Germany as any that would occur. If, therefore,
the question must be settled by an appeal to arms, it had better be so
now ; and he felt convinced that Denmark and Sweden would not
stand alone." Notwithstanding the arguments of the English Minister,
repeated in several interviews, the only promise M. Hall would give
was to the effect that the answer of the Danish Government to
the Diet should so far modify the Patent as to deprive it of its defi-
nitive character. Neither Austria nor Prussia considered such a con-
cession satisfactory ; but the latter Power expressed its willingness
to endeavour to prevent the Execution, on condition of Denmark's
satisfying the Diet with respect to Holstein, and accepting the me-
diation of England upon the international question. Lord Eussell
again urged Denmark to adopt this course; but he was only able to
induce the Danish Government to declare, in its answer to the demand
of the Diet, that it was ready tq negotiate with Germany respecting
alterations in the Patent. On the 5th of November Count Bismarck
suggested that the English Government should itself propose me-
diation, and ask the Diet to suspend the Federal execution. At first
Lord Bussell declined, except on condition of Austria and Prussia
jointly supporting the proposition; but by the 18th November, three
days after the death of King Frederick, his disinclination had vanished,
and the English Minister at Frankfort was instructed to ascertain from
the representatives of Austria, Prussia, and Bavaria, " whether the
Diet would be disposed to accept the sole mediation of Great Britain
in the international questions on which Denmark and Germany were
now at issue; namely, 1st, the relations of the Duchy of Schleswig to
the kingdom of Denmark proper, and to the German Confederation ;
and, i^dly, the position of the Duchy of Holstein in the Danish con-
stitution." The result of Sir A. Malet's enquiries was not favourable
to the scheme. Austria and Prussia admitted it in principle, though
the former regretted that the offer had not been made earlier, and spoke
of the withdrawal of the new Danish Constitution as a necessary pre-
liminary to its acceptance ; but the death of Frederick YII., and the
consequent claim of the Prince of Augustenburg to the ducal crown,
had so roused the public feeling of Germany, that the smaller States

%

Current Events. 763

had no longer the power, even if they had the will, to take any step
which might imply a sacrifice, or even a postponement, of the ques-
tion of succession.

Lord Russell next applied to Prussia. After attributing the adoption
of the new Constitution in Denmark to the neglect by the Prussian
Government of his advice not to allow " the Holstein question to add
to the complications and dangers of Europe," — a sentence which, if it
meant any thing, meant that Germany ought simply to have given in
to Denmark, — he warns Count Bismarck that though England would
not interfere with an execution of a purely Federal character, yet
''should it appear that Federal troops had entered the Duchy on inter-
national grounds, her Majesty's Government may be obliged to inter-
fere;" and he recommends that the Diet should "demand that the Letters
Patent of March 30 should be immediately withdrawn, threatening
execution if their requisition is not complied with, and that both
sides should refer their international differences to the Powers who
were parties to the Treaty of London of the 8th of May 1852." At
the same time he gives his opinion to the Danish Government that
his Majesty Christian IX. ought to " have no difficulty in taking this
step, and it should be done with as httle delay as possible." No
answer appears to have been given by Prussia to this communication, be-
yond a statement that Prussia and Austria were acting in perfect agree-
ment; but Count Rechberg replied about the same time that it was now
too late to demand the revocation of the Patent, when that demand had
been already made and refused ; that the majority of the Diet were
now pressing for occupation instead of execution ; and that, if a simple
execution could still be carried out, it would be best for all parties,
since it would defeat the revolutionary movement in Germany, and
operate as an indirect recognition of the title of Christian IX. On the
28th of November the Committee of the Diet recommended, Austria and
Prussia dissenting, the suspension of the Holstein-Lauenburg vote until
the conflicting claims to the succession had been decided. The pro-
posal of Saxony to exclude the representative of Christian IX. w^as at
once carried by a large majority ; and a further proposal of the same state
to convert the execution into occupation was referred to the Committee.
On the 7th of December, however, the counsels of the moderate party
prevailed, and the Austro-Prussian proposal for immediate and simple
execution was carried by a majority of one. In the mean time, on the
4th of December, the Patent of the 30th of March had been at length
revoked, M. Hall stating at the same time that the concession "would
be now considered by Germany as quite illusory, because since the
passing of the Constitution the Patent had become of very little im-
portance ; . . . whatever course was adopted, however, he felt convinced
that war must come at last."

On the 9th of December Lord "VVodehouse left England, charged
with a special mission to convey to the King of Denmark her Majesty's
congratulations on his accession to the throne, and also with instruc-
tions to endeavour to effect a settlement of the differences between
Denmark and Germany. These instructions were to the following

76 4< Current Events.

effect : The English Government could not admit that the binding force
of the Treaty of 1852 depended in any way "on the execution of ar-
rangements not mentioned or referred to in the Treaty itself ;" but it
was ready to examine " fairly and impartially' whether Denmark had
failed in her obligations towards Germany, and to use all its "influence
at Copenhagen to induce the King of Denmark to comply faithfully
with all the engagements of his crown." Inasmuch as the Constitution
of the 18th of November was "virtually an incorporation of Schles>vig
with Denmark," effected " without the requisite sanction of the Duchy,
it was contrary to those engagements, and ought to be repealed." Lord
Wodehouse was to " communicate the views of her Majesty's Govern-
ment to the ministers of France, Russia, and Sweden," and to endea-
vour to make their joint representations to the Danish Government
''conformable in substance if not identic in terms." On his way
through Berlin he had an interview with Count Bismarck, in
which the views of the two great German Powers were stated with
great distinctness. Count Bismarck said that it was impossible in
the present excited state of Germany " to demand from Denmark
less than the complete fulfilment of her engagements /' that it was
doubtful whether it would be possible to prevent the organisation of
insurrectionary movements on behalf of the Prince of Augustenburg
" without exciting an uncontrollable outbreak of popular passion in Ger-
many ; " that " the demands of Germany were the same as they had
ever been, namely, that Denmark should fulfil her engagement not
to incorporate Schleswig with the kingdom, and to grant a common
Constitution, in which Holstein, Schleswig, and Lauenburg should
enjoy equal rights with the kingdom;" that the Constitution of the
18th of November must be declared before the 1st of January "to
be inapplicable to Schleswig," and that the German Powers " could
not be satisfied with a mere postponement of the meeting of the new
Rigsraad." In answer to Lord Wodehouse's sensible representation
that, after eleven years of fruitless discussion as to what constituted
" equal rights," there was little hope of the German and Danish views
upon the common Constitution being reconciled, Count Bismarck only
said that it was for the Danes, not the Germans, to propose some other
alternative. " I said," continues Lord Wodehouse, " that I supposed that
he would be satisfied if the king issued a declaration that the Consti-
tution could not be carried into effect as regards Schleswig. It might
be necessary, if the question was not concluded by the existing Rigs-
raad, which expired at the end of the year, to call together the new
Rigsraad, by which alone the law could then be altered. His Excel-
lency said, provided Schleswig was exempted from the operation of the
law by some act done by the king before January 1st, when the new
Constitution came into force, he did not care by what assembly
the law was ultimately abrogated. However, it would, he was con-
vinced, be necessary for the King of Denmark to dismiss his present
ministers ; a conp-d'etat would be the best solution of the difficulty.
The fact was, that Germany would never be on good terms with Den-
mark as long as the present democratic institutions of Denmark were

I

*

«

Current Events. '^i^^

maintained." Count Bismarck finally gave Lord Wodeliouse the fol-
lowing memorandum of the German demands, which was approved
by the king and by the Austrian minister at BerHn. "The Aus-
trian and Prussian Governments require that the Danish Government
shall carry out the engagements entered into by Denmark in 1851-52;
so that, apart from the Federal ties which concern only Holstein,
Schlcswig shall not be more closely connected with the kingdom of
Denmark than Holstein. They, therefore, consider that the Constitu-
tion of November 18, 1863, is a violation of the engagements of Den-
mark, and they require that measures shall be taken before January 1
by the Danish Government to prevent that Constitution from being
earned into effect as resfards Schleswij?. When such measures shall
have been taken, they expect to receive from Denmark propositions
as to the manner in which the engagements of 1851-52 are to be
fulfilled."

On the 1 5th of December Lord Wodehouse arrived at Copenhagen ;
and on the 20th, after consulting with the representatives of France,
Russia, and Sweden, he and M. d'Ewen, the Russian envoy, had an
interview with M. Hall. M. Hall listened to their joint remonstrances
against the maintenance of the Constitution of the 18th of IS'ovember,
and replied that the engagements of Denmark towards Germany were
not violated by the Constitution, and that there would be nothing
gained by its revocation ; " that Denmark wanted a final settlement
of the affair," while the only prospect now held out was the re- com-
mencement of the " interminable negotiations with Germany, in which
so many years had been consumed without result ;" that, great as
might be the danger of rejecting the advice of England, the danger
of accepting it seemed to him still greater, since " at present the
king and his people were united," while "if the Constitution were
revoked this great advantage would be lost;" and lastly, that even
if the government were disposed to accept it there was no means
of doing so before the 1st of January, as the Rigsraad would be
closed the next day, and would not consent to undo its own work
even if it were to remain sitting. In answer to this latter difficulty,
Lord Wodehouse suggested that the session might be prolonged un-
til the king could "lay before the Parliament of the nation the
advice which he had received from his allies, and leave to that Par-
liament the responsibility of accepting or rejecting it ; or that, if the
t«n days which still remained before the 1st of January were too few
to pass a repealing Act, the Rigsraad might, "at so alarming a crisis
of the monarchy," pass a resolution " to prolong its own existence till
it had finished the work in hand." To both these plans M. Hall
objected that a change of the constitution required a majority of two-
thirds of the Rigsraad. Then, said Lord Wodehouse, a pledge might
be given to the German Powers that the Schleswig members should
not be summoned to the new Rigsraad, which might proceed without
them to consider the repeal of the Constitution. "M. Hall said that
it was of no use to call together an assembly merely for the purpose of
committing suicide. In short, his excellency was evidently deter-

766 Current Events,

mined not to admit that any means could be found of doing what wc
advised." Lord Wodehouse's appeal was followed up later in the
same day by Sir Augustus Paget. He reminded M. Hall that to him,
as the sole author of the Constitution, the king had a right to look to
propose its revocation ; that no one else had so much influence with
the Eigsraad ; and that if he were to lay before it a " full and correct
account of the situation, the advice which had been given by the
Powers, and the alternative of its rejection," there could be little
doubt that the assembly would agree to pass a repealing Act ; and he
entreated him, " for the sake of the king, as well as his country, to
take upon himself the task which would have to be performed by some
one, unless the monarchy were to be sacrificed." To all this M. Hall
only answered that, according to his notion, " the best thing for the
dynasty, as well as for the country, would be to take up a position in
Schleswig, and there await an attack of Germany ; that even if he
could consent, wdiich he never could, to be the instrument for propos-
ing to the Eigsraad the revocation of a measure which he had just
succeeded in carrying, and even if he could succeed in getting such a
proposition adopted, which he thought an impossibility, he did not
see of what advantage it would be to Denmark."

In spite of all remonstrances, the Eigsraad was dissolved on the
21st of December. " I expressed to M. Hall," says Lord "Wodehouse,
^' my surprise and regret that the Eigsraad had been closed at the
moment when, above all others, it was essential that it should remain
in session. I warned him in the most serious manner of the impres-
sion which must be produced throughout Europe, and especially in
Germany, by an act which could only be construed as a complete
refusal to listen to our advice." M. Hall only repeated that the Eigs-
raad Avas fully aware of the critical position of affairs ; that there was
not the slightest chance of its consenting to revoke the Constitution ;
and therefore that it would have been useless to keep it sitting. But,
as Lord Wodehouse points out, the Eigsraad could not have been
made acquainted with the advice of the English and Eussian ministers,
inasmuch as that advice was only given on the Sunday, and the session
was closed on the Monday. On the 24th the ministry resigned rather
than consent to the Eigsraad being again called together. This pro-
position originated with the king ; but apparently the new ministry
were as little inclined to adopt it as the old one, for it was never men-
tioned again. With the Eigsraad disappeared the last reasonable hope
of preserving peace. So long as that assembly was in existence, the
Constitution might have been repealed befora it came into operation,
and without inflicting any fresh wound upon German feeling ; after
a dissolution, the Constitution could only be repealed by being first
brought into operation, — by the very thing, in fact, being done
against which Germany was protesting. If in some intermediate
stages of the negotiations, Austria and, still more, Prussia were to
blame ; if, by defining with greater exactness the demands of Germany
upon Denmark, they might have given the latter Power less excuse
for resisting them ; if their policy was too much swayed by the force

Current Events. 767

of popular excitement, — there can be no doubt that the responsibility
of this final failure rests with Denmark alone. There are few minis-
ters who have had the same opportunities as M. Hall of leading their
country into an unequal war ; there are still fewer, let us hope, who
have proved themselves so completely equal to their opportunities.

The principal object of Lord Wodehouse's mission being thus de-
feated, he was next instructed, on the 24th of December, to inform the
Danish Government that England would support a proposition "to
refer the differences between Denmark and Germany to a conference
of ministers of all the Powers parties to the Treaty of London, with
the addition of a representative of the German Diet ; it being under-
stood that during the deliberations of such conference no change should
be made in the present state of affairs, and that her Majesty's Govern-
ment would offer no objection to such conference being held at Paris."
The French Government, however, on being sounded on this point,
declined to have a conference held at Paris, on the ground that it
would be discourteous to those Powers not parties to the Treaty of
1852 who had accepted the French invitation to a congress. Upon
this Lord Russell applied, on the 11th of January, to the Austrian and
Prussian Governments to know whether they would accept the fol-
lowing bases for a conference at some place to be hereafter named :
*•' 1. That the Treaty of London should be maintained. 2. That full
security should be taken for the good government of the German sub-
jects, or subjects of German race, of the King of Denmark in the Duchies
of Holstein, Lauenburg, and Schleswig, in conformity with the engage-
ments which Denmark contracted with Germany in 1851-52. 3. That
as an earnest of his intention to fulfil the said engagements, the King
of Denmark should promise France, Great Britain, Russia, and Sweden
to propose to the Rigsraad the repeal of so much of the Constitution
of November 1863 as relates to the Duchy of Schleswig." Neither
Government was disposed to listen favourably to any proposal to
"postpone the invasion of Schleswig until the Danish Government
might think fit to annul by constitutional means the illegal union of
Schleswig and Holstein j" and Count Rechberg further objected to any
specific bases being prescribed, as tending to prevent the Diet from
sending a representative. The idea was shortly after abandoned alto-
gether, upon France declining to take any part in a course which
" meets, in the present state of affairs, with obstacles which forbid all
hope of success."

Since the 28tli of December there had been before the German Diet
two motions, — one, introduced by Bavaria and Saxony, with the object of
converting the Federal execution in Holstein into an occupation in favour
of the Prince of Augustenburg ; the other, introduced by Austria and Prus-
sia, calling upon the Diet to require Denmark to repeal definitively the
Constitution of November, and to declare that in the event of a refusal
the Confederation would proceed to a military occupation of Schleswig,
On the 14th of January the latter motion was thrown out by eleven
votes to five ; and on the same day Austria and Prussia declared their
intention of caiTying out their resolution without regard to its rejec-

768 Current Events.

tion by the Diet. Accordingly, on the 16th of January, a collective
note was presented by the ministers of the two powers to the Danish
Government demanding the withdrawal of the Constitution of the
18th of November within forty-eight hours. On the 18th the demand
was refused, the immediate reason alleged being the impossibility of
complying with it in a legal manner within the time fixed. When
this impossibility was urged on Count Rechberg by the English am-
bassador at Vienna, "he replied that in a constitutional manner it
would be perhaps impossible, but the king might order a state of siege
in Schleswig, which would insure a suspension of the Constitution in
the Duchy ; and that after all the Danish Government could not assert
that they were taken by surprise, for they had been perfectly aware
for a long time past of all that had been intended." He further
maintained that the occupation of Schleswig by Austria and Prussia
was really more for the interests of Denmark than the uncontrolled
action of the Diet, which would otherwise be inevitable ; " that Ger-
many had been so often disappointed in the failure of Denmark to
fulfil her engagements, that the conviction had gained ground that
nothing short of compulsion would insure the satisfaction of the de-
mands which Germany had to make upon her ;" and " that her Ma-
jesty's Government did not sufficiently recognise the violent excitement
of the German public upon this question, nor how impossible it was
for a German government to satisfy the opinions of its subjects without
having recourse to an energetic policy, which should aim at exercising
such pressure upon the Danish Government as would coerce it to fulfil
the obligations contracted eleven years ago." In a similar strain
Count Bismarck spoke of the occupation "as a proof of the intention of
the two great German Powers to maintain the Treaty of London and
the integrity of the Danish monarchy. ' It was out of the question,'
he said, * that an Austrian and Prussian army should be halted on the
banks of the Eider for six weeks, in order that an assembly against
the legality of which they had protested might discuss the expediency
of granting the demand which they had addressed to the Danish
Government.' "

The English Government made one more effort to avert the out-
break of hostilities. On the 26th of January Lord llussell proposed
to France, Russia, and Sweden, that their representatives in London,
together with those of Austria, Prussia, and Denmark, " should sign a
protocol to the following effect : Denmark, on her part, would engage
to convoke without delay the Rigsraad, and lay before that assembly
on its meeting a proposal that it should revoke the Constitution of
November 18, so far as that Constitution applies to the Duchy of
Schleswig ; and Denmark would further engage that the Danish Govern-
ment should employ their utmost efforts in order to induce the Rigs-
raad to consent to such revocation. Austria and Prussia, on their
part, would declare that they accepted the diplomatic engagement so
contracted by Denmark, and, as a consequence of such acceptance, would
agree to delay tiie passage of the Eider by any military force until the
result of the measures to be taken by Denmark should be ascertained."

I

Current Events. 769

This suggestion was only accepted by Sweden; France and liussia
delayed to give a positive answer until it was known whether Austria
and Prussia would concur in it. It was little likely that they should
do so, for the new proposal contained nothing which they had not
already rejected. On the 28tli of January, however, it was formally
made to both Governments, and at once declined by them. On the
31st, Marshal Wrangel summoned the Danish commander-in-chief to
evacuate Schleswig, and received for answer that he had orders to de-
fend it. The King and the President of the Council left Copenhagen
for the array, and the Austrian and Prussian ministers took their
departure.

The internal state of France has at length become so much more
interesting to Frenchmen than external events, that the movement

^ has been hailed as "le reveil de I'esprit public." The

Republican enthusiasm of 1848 did not last long; the
reaction was so complete in 18o2, that the cowp-d'etat of the 2d of
December was accomplished v/ith the greatest ease. The masses, who
had lost all political sentiments whatever, applauded the bold stroke,
and blindly voted as the Dictator ordered them. A great part of
the middle class was glad to be rid of the nightmare of socialism at
any price, and submitted with good grace, if not with devotion. In-
stead of politics, these men rushed into speculation. Fortunes were
rapidly won and lost ; but there was real material prosperity enough
to prevent criticism of the government. The first chamber elected
under the new regime in 1852 did not contain a single oppositionist,
so well had the administration enlightened the people on the duties of
universal suffrage, and so powerful were its means of persuasion.

But the fire was not quite quenched. Groups of eminent men
who were called in disdain " les anciens partis,'*' preserved the tradi-
tions of liberty; and in the elections of 1857 five opposition candi-
dates were successful. They were called, at first in derision, "the
five;" but they soon adopted the name as a title of honour. It cannot
be said that their opinions were very reasonable, or that, even on
their own grounds, they always acted wisely. They often committed
the fault of asking too much, if not absolutely, at least relatively to
the occasion. Still the debates of the legislative body, which no one
had read, and which the papers had left off" printing, began once more
to excite attention ; anrl, as the paroxysm of fear had subsided, men
began to feel themselves too much confined by the constitution of
1852. The electoral movement of 1863 was strong enough to return,
not only " the five," but also some of the leaders of the old parties,
such as MM. Thiers, Berryer, Marie, Jules Simon, and other practised
debaters. Still the opposition does not count more than 24 or 25
members, instead of the 60, or even 130, who once divided the cham-
ber of 283 deputies. The French government has many means of
influence ; it holds in its hands both hope and fear, — the two great
motive powers when passion is not aroused. But passion seems
likely to be aroused. The government only succeeds in putting the

770 Current Events,

moderate men — the true liberals — to silence by substituting radical
iire-brands in their place.

The first session of the new chamber was opened on the 5th of
Novem])er last. The speech from the throne was important, and had
been looked for with anxiety. Men wondered how the Emj^eror
would take the revival of liberalism ; whether he would issue reac-
tionary decrees, so as to retain at all hazards the dictatorial power he
held, or whether he would anticipate the demands of public opinion by
letting in a few gleams of liberty. Probably both courses were weighed,
and the difficulty was solved by turning off at a tangent. Things were
left as they were ; and the public was amused with the bubble of a
universal congress destined to be the prelude of perpetual peace.

Not that the imperial speech made no allusion to internal politics;
for example: "The legislative body has been renewed for the third
time since the foundation of the Empire, and for the third time, in
spite of some local dissent, I have only to congratulate myself on the
result of the elections. You have all taken the same oath; that se-
cures to me your support. Our duty is to do the business of the coun-
try speedily and well, in fidelity to the constitution which has given
us eleven years of prosperity, and which you have sworn to maintain."
The way in which the oath is insisted on betrays a certain anxiety.
The cases that have happened of deputies elect refusing to swear
fidelity to the Emperor have occasioned a rule that each candidate
is to deposit his oath in writing with the prefect a week before the
election. The contrast drawn between the cases of local dissent and
the common oath leads to the suspicion that it was intended to convey
an imputation upon the honesty of some who had taken it. If the
Emperor only meant to say that certain electoral colleges had failed to
elect the candidate of the government, he expressed himself with need-
less obscurity, and uttered a complaint quite unworthy of a speech from
the throne.

The "verification of powers'' might have shown how numerous
were the cases of local dissent. Opposition candidates were almost
every where proposed, and in some places failed only by a very few
votes. During the verification many scandals were revealed, such as
are inevitable under the circumstances. Of course a man wishes to
succeed in his enterprises. He who wills the end, wills also the means;
and the stronger he is, the more obstinate is his determination. Thus
the French government, when it proposes official candidates, imposes
on itself the necessity of succeeding at almost any price.

The nomination of official candidates was one great subject of the
debate on the address — the debate in which the opposition must ex-
pose all its grievances, and revenge itself for its enforced silence during
the rest of the year. This liberty, such as it is, onh' dates from No-
vember 20, 18G0. Between the coui>cVeiat and that date France was
a country "constitutionnel mais non parlementaire ;" and no one could
present an address or make an enquiry. Indeed there was no one to
answer such enquiries, since the constitution does not permit the min-
isters to sit in the legislative body. But the decree of November 1860

Current Events, 771

allowed the chamber to present an address ; and in the course of the
discussion any deputy might address a question to the government
orators. During the rest of the session no such right exists.

In the recent discussion two speakers, M. Jules Favre and M. Thiers,
exposed the abuse of official candidates. The former was for abolish-
ing them entirely, while the latter was for allowing them in a modified
form. " The official candidatures," said M. Favre on*the 13th of Janu-
ary, " have always appeared to me unjustifiable, because they are in
contradiction to the very principle of universal suffi-age ; because they
lead to an improper application of the electoral law ; and because they
are dangerous to every body, and especially to the government." This
thesis was sustained in a more practical way than M. Thiers sustained
his, although M. Thiers is considered the very ideal of a practical man.
For, the moment a government is permitted to recommend its candi-
dates it is implicitly permitted to secure their election by all the means
in its power. M. Thiers, however, said, '^ I do not think I impose
any very hard condition when I say that these official candidatures are
only admissible under certain conditions : the first is respect for de-
cency; the second, abstinence from using any of- the means which the
possession of power puts into the hands of its administrators ; the third,
observance of the law." This is as much as to say, I allow you to do
a thing, but on condition of your not using the means in your hands
for doing it. Abstinence in such a case would be something more
than human.

M. Eouher, the minister of state, and the chief representative of
government in the chamber, replied to these arguments by two others
— " There always have been government candidates, and parties exist
which are hostile to the imperial dynasty." Those who answered him
failed to bring out one point, namely, that before 1852 the strife was
confined to the parties, while the sovereign reposed in a higher sphere,
supposed to be untroubled by their din. A party in power can go
farther than a prince ; for the party can appeal to the country and
receive its approbation, or if it has passed this limit it may be turned
out of office. Now, several of the prefects have gone far beyond the
limits of what would be condoned in a party.

These official candidatures have made a deep impression on France.
The unmeasured interference of the government has had the palpable
effect of alienating several of its former partisans ; and the question of
universal suffrage has been brought on the carpet again. This question
is indeed tabooed, and no one but the orators of the government are
allowed to say a word against it. If a private person declared that he
thought it no panacea, he would be " attacking the constitution." But
the government may say that universal suffrage " would do great harm
if it were not directed." This consideration makes us appreciate the
prudence of M. Thiers when he said as deputy, "I now conclude with a
simple reflection. I know very well the argument with which many
people console themselves for the irregularities which may take place in
the execution of the electoral law. They say, ' What would you have ?
We have to deal with universal suffrage. Universal suffrage is an edged
VOL. IV, 6 e

772 Current Events.

tool. We must consider how very dangerous it is ; and we must leave the
government means to direct it.' I wish that we could, once for all, come
to an understanding on this subject. In giving us universal suffrage,
was it your intention, yes or no, to give us liberty ? If it was your
intention to give us liberty, you have no right to use all the means you
usually employ to direct universal suffrage. If it were demonstrated
that universal sufl&rage is as dangerous as it is said to be, / do not say
that I would sacrifice the libertij of elections for this consideration, but I
own that I should be profoundly affected. Will you allow me to give
you my sincere opinion ? I do not know what is in store in the future
for universal suffrage. I see what it is at present ; and I am convinced
that if fewer attempts to enlighten it were made — do you know what
would happen 1 It might perhaps rather increase the means of con-
trol in the hands of the state ; and I am sure that, instead of destroy-
ing the government to which you are attached, it might perhaps
save it."

These last words produced many protests, but did not hinder the
representative of the government from enlarging on the dangers of
universal suffrage, which many people think, perhaps without much
foundation, will be one day abolished by the imperial government.

The international relations of France are more important to us than
its internal affairs ; for though the Emperor is at peace with all his
neighbours, his enemies declare that his apparent repose is only the
preparation of the lion meditating on what victim he shall first leap.
Against this suspicion the following passages of his speech were directed :
*' In the midst of these successive rendings of the fundamental Euro-
pean pact (the treaties of 1815), ardent passions are being over-excited,
and in the South as well as in the North powerful interests are demand-
ing a solution. What, then, is more legitimate or more sensible than to
assemble the powers of Europe in a congress where self-love and resis-
tance will disappear before a supreme arbitration ? What is more in
conformity with the ideas of the time, with the wishes of the majority,
than to speak to the conscience of the statesmen of all countries, and
to say to them, * Have not the prejudices and the aversions which divide
us already lasted too long % Shall we always feed our mutual suspi-
cions on exaggerated armaments 1 Must our most precious resources
be indefinitely wasted in a vain ostentation of our strength ? Shall
we for ever keep ourselves in a position which is neither that of peace
with its security, nor of war with its chances of success ? Have we not
been too long giving a factitious importance to the subversive spirit of
extreme parties, by opposing our rigid logic to the legitimate aspira-
tions of our people % Let us be bold, and substitute a stable and regular
order for our sickly and precarious state, even though it costs us some
sacrifices. Let us assemble, without any preconceived system, without
exclusive ambition, and with the single thought of establishing for the
future an order of things founded upon an understanding of the in-
terests of sovereign and people.' "

There may have been a time when such political philosophy was
something practical — when it was enough to speak profoundly about

Current Events. 773

conciliation, progress, civilisation, nationalities, and other " ideas," in
order to make a great country give up a portion of its territory to its
neighbour, or consent to such a diminution of its forces as might be
convenient to another power. The Emperor himself, as we shall see,
had no great faith in the meeting of the congress. Yet in his letter of
November 4 he invited all the sovereigns and independent states in
Europe to take part in it. This solenon invitation provoked several
kinds of reply.

The first in order was that of the English government (Nov. 12),
demanding full information on the objects of the meeting, before giving
its consent. On the reply of M. Drouyn de Lhuys (Nov. 23), which
impHed that every question then agitating Europe was to be discussed,
Lord Russell definitively refused to have any thing to do with it.
Russia and Austria both objected that the congress could do no good
unless the questions to be canvassed were previously defined. Prussia,
having never broken the treaties of 1815, and having consequently no
interest either way, accepted the invitation ; so did Saxony, Wurtem-
berg, and Hanover, but on the condition that the other European
powers, especially the great German powers, w«re represented. Ba-
varia and the Germanic Confederation and Turkey accepted it with
certain reservations. Belgium and Holland accepted it simply. Por-
tugal, the Pope, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, accepted it
without reserve, and with more or less readiness.

We see, then, that the invitation to the congress was accepted by
almost all those who were not interested, or who thought they could
gain by it; all the others made their own reservations. Every one
might have been willing to get a portion of his neighbour's territory,
but only on the condition of losing none of his own. Did not the
Emperor foresee this result % Let us examine a little more of the
speech of November 5. " When the insurrection broke out in Poland, the
governments of Russia and France were in the best relations; since
the peace, they had found themselves in agreement on the great Euro-
pean questions ; and, I do not hesitate to declare, during the Italian
war, as well as at the time of the annexation of Nice and Savoy, the
Emperor Alexander gave me the most sincere and cordial support.
This good understanding demanded some consideration ; and I must
have believed the Polish cause to be very popular in France if for its
sake I did not hesitate to compromise one of the first alliances of the
Continent, and to lift up my voice in favour of a nation, rebellious in
the eyes of Russia, but in our eyes possessing a legal right inscribed in
history and in treaties. . . . The Polish insurrection, the duration of
which has given it a national character, enlisted every one's sympathies ;
and the object of diplomacy was to get for it the greatest possible
number of supporters, in order to press upon Russia with the whole
weight of European public opinion. This almost unanimous agree-
ment appeared to us the means most proper to persuade the cabinet of
St. Petersburg. Unfortunately, our disinterested advice was inter-
preted as a threat ; and the measures taken by England, Austria, and
France, instead of stopping the contest, have only envenomed it. Both

774 Current Events.

parties have been guilty of excesses which are equally deplorable on
the score of humanity. What is to be done, then ? Are we reduced
to the alternative of war or silence? No." Is it not possible, the
argument seems to proceed, to make " much ado about nothing," to
make a great sensation, to exhibit a surprising spectacle, and to elec-
trify the public ? If the congress succeeds, it will have made a lucky
hit ; we shall have established the perpetual peace which Podiebrad
and Henry IV., Leibniz and the Abbe de St. Pierre, the Quakers with
Mr. Cobden and M. Victor Hugo, could never compass. If we do not
succeed, we shall at least have shown our good-will, our fidelity to our
motto, " the Empire is peace;" and the fault must be laid on those who
refused. It is very ingenious to say, " Two ways are open to us : the
one leads to progress through conciliation and peace ; the other leads
necessarily to war through an obstinate maintenance of a past order of
things which crumbles beneath us."

The objection is, that this ingenuity, which here as in the ancient
oracles gives an equal apparent support to two contradictory opinions,
hinders the public from seeing where it stands. Among the readers of the
speech of November 5 there were as many who hoped for peace as there
were who feared war. A similar uncertainty is the constant result of
reading any manifesto from the Emperor, such as his letter to the
Prince of Augustenburg (Dec. 10, 1863) on the Schleswig-Holstein
succession, which manifestly holds in an even balance a sympathy for
the cause of nationalities and respect for the treaty of 1852.

We are not much better informed upon Mexican affairs. The war
is not popular in France j it has been briskly attacked in the chamber,
and the press is as hostile to it as it dares to be. The government has
said no more about it than it was forced to say. We do not quite
know what its views for the future may be. The one thing certain is,
that the Archduke Maximilian has accepted the new throne, and will
soon set out for America. If it is true that it requires a higher ad-
vancement in a people to bear a republican than a monarchical form of
government, the new prince ought not to fail through internal diffi-
culties. The prestige of his birth and his personal character will both
help him ; and he will be aided by several powerful interests. In the
mean time France sends a scientific mission. ** Sixty-six years ago,"
says the minister of public instruction in his report to the Emperor,
"40,000 men of the army of Italy, and our most glorious captain,
landed at Alexandria. Behind the young general there marched, not
only the bravest soldiers in the world, but a whole colony of scientific
meo, to effect another conquest of Egypt by lifting up the veil that had
concealed its ancient civilisation for fifteen centuries." Consequently,
a scientific expedition must be sent to Mexico. " The results gathered
sixty years ago are the guarantee of the results to be acquired by the
new mission." Science will certainly be the gainer, and industry also ;
perhaps the French treasury will be no loser. The first estimate of
the expense is 200,000 francs, and the commission to draw up the in-
structions for the exploring parties is dated February 27, 1864.

The men of science will find their brethren of the sword still in

Current Events, 775

Mexico. It is not impossible that the army there will occasion a
second loan besides that contracted at the beginning of this year. At
that moment the floating debt had attained the formidable dimensions
of 972 millions, a gi-eat part of it being payable on demand, so that
a panic on the Exchange might have produced a catastrophe. The
minister, in his annual report on the finances, in the Moniteur of
December 3, 1863, asked for a loan of 300 millions to consolidate that
sum, and so to reduce the debt to 672 millions. The Emperor con-
sented, of course. The chamber consented with some hesitation. The
capitalists, large and small, also consented ; and much more than the
300 millions was subscribed for. The law authorising the loan was
passed on the 30th of December 1863 ; and the price of the stock was
fixed by decree (January 12, 1864) at 66-30, 3 per cent. To realise
the 300 millions at this rate, besides the 15 millions necessary for
expenses, and to pay arrears during the present year, it was necessary
to create stock paying an annual interest of 14,253,393 francs. The
subscription was opened on the 18th of January, and closed on the
2oth of the same month. It was understood that subscriptions for
6-franc interest should be subject to no reduction, unless the offers went
beyond the demand, while all subscriptions beyond this minimum were
reducible in certain proportions. The subscribers were 541,993, —
134,105 in Paris, and 407,888 in the departments; they subscribed
for an annual interest of 219,281,464 francs. The irreducible subscrip-
tions (for 6 francs of interest) amounted to 2,409,534 (of interest).
The 119,731 subscriptions of between 10 and 120 francs, representing
3,391,640 francs, were reduced to the minimum, and produced 718,386,
leaving 11,125,473 francs to be divided among the capitalists. When
we see that a demand for 14 millions produces offers of 219 mil-
lions, we must feel sure that the state enjoys an excellent credit, and
that the provision of unemployed capital is far from being exhausted.
But if we were to go so far as to think that France has in hand the
4725 millions necessary to purchase the 219 millions of the subscrip-
tion, we should be grievously mistaken. It was known beforehand
that the 315 millions of capital, or 14 millions of interest, would
be exceeded ; capitalists, therefore, put down their names for larger
sums than they could have paid, in order that, after the proportional
reduction which would be made, the sum they really desired might be
allotted to them. It is only the irreducible subscriptions, and a por-
tion of those for between 10 and 120 francs interest, which really
represent savings. Now, adding the 2,409,000 of the first to the
3,391,000 of the second, we shall have about 5,800,000 of interest, or
about 150 millions of capital. But this figure must be too large. All,
or nearly all, the rest was furnished by speculators. The amount of
the subscription was approximatively known day by day. The bankers
and great capitalists were able to wait, and to take their measures with
full knowledge of the situation. If this information is exact — and we
have it on excellent authority — it shows that the goose which lays the
golden eggs, as we may call the public loan, is somewhat sickly, and
requires rest in order to restore her strength. Otherwise, the govern-

776 Current Events,

ment will have to apply to the bankers, and to pay them their com-
mission, besides losing the moral support of the spectacle of long queues
of subscribers curling from all the doors of the offices of the minister
of finance.

To make loans less frequent, the government should walk in the way
of economy ; it has not yet entered that road. The estimates for 1865
are just given out. The expenses stand at 1,797,263,790 francs, or
21,081,789 more than for 1864. The receipts stand at 1,799,801,062,
or 19,313,070 more than for 1864. This shows a surplus of 2,535,272
francs. But this is only the " ordinary budget." The " extraordinary
budget" shows 108,750,011 francs for receipts, and 108,650,000 francs
for expenses. Both together amount to 1906 millions of expenses, and
1908 millions of receipts. The surplus of two millions would be
excellent, if there was not also the *^ supplementary budget" to provide
for, as well as "unforeseen occurrences." The first of these by itself has
almost always proved equal to deranging the most admirably contrived
equilibrium of French financial ministers ; and history shows that in
France " the unforeseen" is stronger than laws, constitutions, kings,
emperors, or the most scientific and profound policy.

tONDOX :

ROBSON AND LBVRY, PRINTKRS, GRKAT NEW STREET,

FETTER LANE.

I

CONTENTS.

1. The Irish Exodus and Tenant Eight.

2. The Schleswig-Hoktein Movement in Germany.

3. Agriculture in France.

4. The Bank Charter Act.

5. The Progress of Chemical Science.

6. Thackeray.

7. Indian Epic Poetry.

8. Asceticism amongst Mahometan Nations.

9. The Colonisation of Noithumbria.

10. The Rise of the English Poor-Law.

11. Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.

12. Conflicts with Rome.

13. Contemporary Literature.

14. Current Events.

Tlie title-page and iMex to Volume IV. will be ready in a few days, anU
will he supplied, gratis, to subscribers, on application to tkejiidflis/icrs.